COVID-19: Low vaccination rates created 'perfect conditions' for Omicron, says WHO

As the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 continues to ravage the nations across the world, the UN health agency WHO said that the SARS-CoV-2 variants are unleashed on the world due to low vaccination rates. “We’ve created the perfect conditions for the emergence of virus variants," the WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a COVID-19 briefing. The health agency reiterated that it was crucial that more is done to help all countries receive lifesaving coronavirus jabs as quickly as possible, to ward off the impact of the fast-spreading and highly transmissible strain B.1.1.529.

Just like previous variants, said Tedros, Omicron “is hospitalising people and it is killing people,” even when it may be less severe than the Delta variant. “It is not mild,” reiterated the WHO chief, adding that the highest number of COVID-19 cases reported so far in the pandemic were driven by the Omicron. 

“We know, for certain, that there is an underestimate of COVID-19 cases [caused by Omicron] because reported numbers do not reflect the backlog of testing around the holidays, the number of positive self-tests not registered, and burdened surveillance systems that miss cases around the world,” the WHO chief said. 

Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma, and Omicron reflect 'low vaccination rates'

Tedros stressed the need for equitable distribution of COVID vaccines worldwide, as he said that vaccine’s unequal distribution as wealthier nations hoard it in abundance and poorer nations continue to have an inadequate population jabbed against the virus, was the “biggest failures of 2020.”

"Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma, and Omicron reflect that in part because of low vaccination rates,” he emphasised. A senior World Health Organization (WHO) epidemiologist also on Thursday warned that the WHO’s data revealed that countries could not “boost” their way out of the pandemic and that the Omicron variant was transmitting “intensely” just as worse as the Delta variant did.

“In the context of intense social mixing, in the context of limited use of proven public health measures, in the context of limited vaccination coverage globally…those are conditions that will allow any variant, any virus, to thrive,” Dr Maria Van Kerkhove told BBC radio. “Omicron is taking advantage of that, and so is Delta.” nearly 128 countries are now struggling to contain the highly contagious Omicron, once again, reinstating the health safety measures and restrictions worldwide.