Geneva: The World Health Organization told Tuesday that half a million Covid-19 deaths had been recorded because the omicron variant was found, mentioning the “outside tragic” count.
The manager of the GHO Abdi Mahamud said that 130 million cases and 500,000 deaths were recorded globally because Omicron was declared a variant that was a concern at the end of November.
Since then it has quickly overtaked deltas as a world dominant Covid variant because it is more transmitting, although it seems to cause disease that is less severe.
“In an effective vaccine, half a million people are dying, it’s really something,” Mahamud told direct interaction on the WHO social media channel.
“While everyone says omicron lighter, (they) miss the point that half a million people die because this is detected.
“It’s tragic outside.”
Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical instructions in Covid-19, said the number of omicron cases were “surprising”, while the number of cases and death would actually be much higher than known.
“It made the previous highlight look almost flat,” he said.
“We are still in the middle of this pandemic. I hope we get closer to the end,” he said. “Many countries have not passed the peak of their omicron.”
Van Kerkhove said he was very worried that the number of deaths had increased for several consecutive weeks.
“This virus continues to be dangerous,” he said.
The WHO is tracking four sub-genres of Omicron. While the BA.1 sub-strain is dominant, BA.2 is more transmitting and is expected to take into account the increase in the omicron case.
Van Kerkrove said there was no indication so far to suggest that BA.2 produced a more severe covid disease than BA.1, but emphasized that it was still “very early days” in the collection of evidence.
Mahamud added that it was not yet known whether someone could be infected with BA.1 and BA.2 at the same time.
Covid-19 has killed nearly 5.75 million people since it appeared in China in December 2019, according to the Counting AFP compiled from official sources on Tuesday.
Nearly 10.25 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been given globally.