COVID-19 death margin crosses 500,000, since discovery of Omicron: WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday said that over 500,000 COVID-19 deaths had been recorded since the Omicron-variant of coronavirus was discovered. WHO incident manager Abdi Mahamud calling it "beyond tragic," noted that around 130 million coronavirus infections and half a million casualties have been recorded across the globe since the Omicron (B.1.1.529) was declared as a variant of concern by the United Nations (UN) health agency.

According to reports, it is more transmissible as compared to other variants of COVID-19, due to which it has rapidly overtaken Delta to become the most dominant coronavirus variant.

As per Mahamud, "In the age of effective vaccines, over half a million people dying, it's really something. Everyone might be saying Omicron is milder, but they are missing the fact that half a million people have already succumbed to the illness since it was detected."

According to the WHO's technical lead on COVID-19, Maria Van Kerkhove said the sheer percentage of Omicron cases was "astounding", while the actual numbers are much higher. It makes other peaks look flat."

She added, "We are still in the middle of this pandemic, as many nations have not yet passed their peak of Omicron."

While concerning about the spike in the number of casualties Van Kerkhove said, "The virus continues to be dangerous."

As per the weekly COVID-19 update released by WHO, "Over 68,000 new deaths have been reported from Omicron last week, which is seven per cent more as compared to previous weeks.

At the same time, the number of new weekly COVID-19 cases have been decreased by 17% to arouns 19.3 million.

As per the data, over 10.25 billion vaccine doses have been administered globally against contagious mutants.