WHO chief scientist urges people not to be intimidated by Omicron | Coronavirus Plague News

A senior scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO) has urged people not to be alarmed by the outbreak Omicron coronavirus and said it was about to say whether the vaccine needed to be revised.

Speaking in an interview at a Reuters Next meeting on Friday, Soumya Swaminathan said it was impossible to predict if Omicron would be a serious problem.

Omicron has been found at least 38 countries in Asia, Africa, America, the Middle East and Europe and has reached seven of the nine provinces of South Africa, where it was first identified. Many governments have enacted travel regulations that would prevent distinct changes.

Swaminathan said Omicron appeared to be “highly contagious” and cited a number of South African indicators that indicate the number of cases is increasing day by day.

How should we be concerned? We need to be prepared and careful, not scared because things happened to us again last year, ”he said.

“Delta is responsible for 99 percent of the world’s disease. This diversity needs to be expanded so that you can succeed and become the world’s largest. It is possible, but not impossible to predict.”

More is still unknown Omicron, while European regions are battling a wave of the well-known Delta disease.

“We have to wait, expect it not to be … but we are about to end all differences,” Swaminathan said.

The WHO said Friday it had not seen any reports of Omicron’s death.

The WHO’s emergency director, Mike Ryan, said on Friday there was no evidence to confirm a vaccine change to co-opt Omicron.

“Right now, we have a very effective vaccine that works. We need to focus on fair distribution. We need to focus more on giving people at risk of getting vaccinated,” Ryan said during the visit.

WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told a brief United Nations conference in Geneva that vaccinators should be prepared to change their products.

Ugur Sahin, CEO of BioNTech Germany, which manufactures the COVID and Pfizer vaccine, told a Reuters Next meeting that the company needed to change the shot as soon as possible.

Sahin also said modern vaccines should continue to provide protection against dangerous diseases, even if they change.

“I believe in some facts [point in time] we will need a new vaccine against this new species. The question is how fast it should be available, “Sahin said.

Omicron was first addressed to the WHO from South Africa on November 24, when the first known laboratory case was identified from a sample taken on November 9.

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s chief expert on COVID-19, said the number of viruses had increased in November, meaning that some of the first cases could be found outside South Africa.

The number of COVID-19 cases rose by three million in South Africa on Friday as new daily Omicron-infected infections rose sharply, government figures showed.

On Friday 16,055 new cases were reported in 24 hours, bringing the total number of laboratory cases to 3,004,203.

“This increase represents 24.3 percent positive,” the state-run National Institute for Communicable Diseases said in a daily update.

Vaccination concerns

Vaccination rates vary from country to country, but there are alarming opportunities in developing countries. Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world and the former capital of Asia COVID-19, has protected about 35 percent of the population.

The Red Cross official said Friday’s release of Omicron was “real evidence” of the dangers of uncoordinated vaccines around the world.

“Scientists have repeatedly warned people around the world about the dangers of new vaccines in areas where vaccines are scarce,” Francesco Rocca, President of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told. AFP in an interview in Moscow.

About 65 percent of people in high-income countries have been exposed to the coronavirus vaccine, compared with more than 7 percent in low-income countries, according to a UN report.

Many scientists say the way to prevent the spread of the virus is to ensure that poor countries have access to the vaccine, not to give it to people in rich countries.

An estimated 264 million people are said to have been infected since the first outbreak in China in late 2019 and 5.48 million people have died, according to Reuters.