WHO Chief Scientists ask the world not to "panic" over Omicron COVID variant

The World Health Organization's (WHO) chief scientist has asked people not to get very anxious due to the development of the Omicron COVID-19 variant, adding that it is too early to determine whether vaccines will need to be reworked.

Speaking at Friday's Reuters Next conference, Soumya Swaminathan said it was impossible to predict whether Omicron would be the predominant strain.

Omicron has been identified in at least 38 nations across Asia, Africa, the Americas, the Middle East, and Europe, reaching seven of the country's nine provinces. Numerous governments have tightened travel restrictions to prevent the variant from entering.

Swaminathan asserted that Omicron appeared to be "highly transmissible," citing South African data indicating that the number of cases is doubling daily.

"Should we be concerned?" We need to be able and careful, not panicked because our situation has changed significantly from a year ago," she explained.

"Delta is responsible for 99 percent of diseases worldwide. This variant would need to be more transmissible to outcompete and become dominant globally. It is possible, but not predictable."

Much about Omicron remains unknown as parts of Europe grapple with an outbreak of the more familiar Delta variant.

"We'll have to wait and see; let's hope it's milder... "However, it is too early to draw conclusions about the variant in its entirety," Swaminathan said.

ON FRIDAY, the WHO stated that it had not received any reports of Omicron-related deaths.

Mike Ryan, the WHO's emergency director, said on Friday that there was no evidence to support tailoring vaccines to Omicron.

"At the moment, we have highly effective vaccines in use. We need to prioritise distributing them more equitably. We need to prioritise vaccination of those most at risk," Ryan said during a social media event.

WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier while speaking at a United Nations announcement in Geneva that vaccination manufacturers should brace themselves for the possibility of product adjustments.

Ugur Sahin, CEO of Germany's BioNTech, which collaborates with Pfizer to develop a COVID vaccine.

Sahin also stated that current vaccines would continue to provide protection against severe covid disease despite mutations.

"In general, I believe that at some point in the future, we will require a new vaccine against this novel variant. The question is how quickly it must be made available," Sahin explained.

Omicron was first reported to the WHO on November 24 from South Africa, and the first laboratory-confirmed case was identified on November 9 from a specimen collected that day.

Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's technical guidance on COVID-19, stated that a backlog of virus sequences had developed in November, implying that some of the virus's earliest cases may still be discovered outside South Africa.

COVID-19 infections in South Africa surpassed three million on Friday, official figures showed, as new daily infections caused by the Omicron variant increased sharply.

On Friday, 16,055 new cases were recorded during a 24-hour reporting period, bringing the total to 3,004,203 laboratory-confirmed cases.