WHO says COVID still 'dangerous' as death toll surpasses 500,000 since Omicron detection

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday said that 500,000 COVID-19 deaths had been registered since the Omicron variant was discovered. Calling it “beyond tragic”, WHO incident manager Abdi Mahamud said that around 130 million coronavirus infections and half a million deaths had 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. 

The Omicron variant, first flagged by South African health experts in November, has since then rapidly taken over Delta as the world’s dominant COVID-19 variant because it is more transmissible even though it appears to cause mild illness. In a live interaction on WHO’s social media channels, the WHO incident manager lamented that with the COVID-19 vaccines being developed and still 500,000 deaths occurring is “really something.” 

He added, “While everyone was saying Omicron is milder, (they) missed the point that half a million people have died since this was detected.”

WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, Maria Van Kerkhove underscored that the sheer number of Omicron cases was “astounding”. She added that the true number of coronavirus infections and deaths could be much higher than the ones which are known about. Van Kerkhove said, “It makes the previous peaks look almost flat” adding, “We're still in the middle of this pandemic. I hope we're getting closer to the end of it…Many countries have not passed their peak of Omicron yet”.

‘The virus continues to be dangerous’: WHO

Further sounding an alarm over the present situation of the COVID-19 pandemic with governments across the globe lifting restrictions, WHO technical lead on COVID-19 said that she was extremely concerned that the number of deaths had drastically increased for several weeks in a row. Van Kerkhove stated, “This virus continues to be dangerous”.

The latest live Q&A session by WHO came after the United Nations health agency, earlier this month, stated that the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 which causes COVID-19, nearly accounts for nearly all the coronavirus infections across the globe. The WHO said that 93% of all coronavirus specimens collected in the past month were found to be several sub-lineages of the Omicron variant such as BA.1, BA.1.1, BA.2 and BA.3. 

In an epidemiological update, WHO had noted that in parts of Europe and Asia, BA.2, also known as the “stealth” subvariant, is starting to replace BA.1. The global health body further informed, “BA.2-designated sequences have been submitted to GISAID from 57 countries to date.”

(Image: AP/Pixabay)