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The World Health Organization (WHO)said Wednesday that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 is dangerous, especially for those who have not been vaccinated against the disease.<\/p>\n
The WHO said the huge global spike in cases was being driven by Omicron but insisted there should be no surrender to the variant of concern.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile Omicron causes less severe disease than Delta, it remains a dangerous virus, particularly for those who are unvaccinated,\u201d WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference.<\/p>\n
“We mustn\u2019t allow this virus a free ride or wave the white flag, especially when so many people around the remain unvaccinated,” Tedros added and pointed out that in Africa, over 85 per cent of people are yet to receive a single dose of vaccine.<\/p>\n
“We can\u2019t end the acute phase of the pandemic unless we close this gap,\u201d declared the WHO director.<\/p>\n
Tedros had proposed that every country should have 10 percent of their population vaccinated the end of of every country to have 10 per cent of their population vaccinated by the end of September 2021, 40 per cent by the end of December, and 70 per cent by mid-2022.<\/p>\n
But 90 countries had still not reached 40 per cent, 36 of them still short of the 10per cent mark, he said.<\/p>\n
The \u201coverwhelming majority\u201d of people admitted to hospitals around the world were unvaccinated, he added.<\/p>\n
While vaccines remain very effective at preventing death and severe COVID-19 disease, they do not fully prevent transmission, said Tedros.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore transmission means more hospitalisations, more deaths, more people off work \u2014 including teachers and health workers \u2014 and more risk of another variant emerging that is even more transmissible and more deadly than Omicron.<\/p>\n
Tedros said that the numbers of deaths worldwide had stabilised at around 50,000 per week.<\/p>\n
\u201cLearning to live with this virus does not mean we can, or should, accept this number.”<\/p>\n
WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan added: \u201cThis is not the time to declare this is a welcome virus.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The World Health Organization (WHO)said Wednesday that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 is dangerous, especially for those who have not been vaccinated against the disease. The WHO said the huge global spike in cases was being driven by Omicron but…","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":279809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","footnotes":""},"categories":[265,282,17,235,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-covid-19","category-covid-19-news","category-health","category-homepage-carousel","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n