Sounding another alarm around Omicron, World Health Organisation has noted 500,000 people died due to Covid in the past 5 weeks and over 130 million cases have been reported. And last week itself, 68,000 deaths were reported.
So, while everyone was saying Omicron is milder, I think we missed the point that half a million people have died since this was detected," WHO's Dr Abdi Mahamud said and further added, “And, in the age of effective vaccine, half a million people dying is really something."
Speaking on the COVID situation worldwide the WHO official said, some countries are seeing an increasing trend, others steady, and others down, but unfortunately in the third year of this we’re having more deaths reported. “130 million cases since Omicron was declared as a VOC and 500,000 deaths."
Adding to this, Maria Van Kerkhove said, “The way that Omicron has replaced Delta around the world so quickly, the sharp peaks that we’ve seen, we literally have had to redraw the scale of the epidemic curve that we have been using."
How Omicron is affecting different parts of the world
Within the US, where we see trends going down in most of the places, other parts of America, particularly Southern America, have seen an increase, so there is variation. In terms of when you move to Africa region, where Omicron has started, it is going down.
Europe, the western side, the wave is going down but it is picking up in the eastern side of Europe and is really affecting places with low vaccination and a weak health system. So, Eastern Europe and Central Asia will be something.
Then, coming down through the East Mediterranean region, we see a big uptick in Gulf countries, countries that already had a vaccination but also countries like Afghanistan and Somalia with very low vaccine
Officials further asserted that the only way this can be averted is through vaccination.
There is a very significant difference in individuals who are vaccinated with one dose, two doses and some people have had three doses. “There is a significant reduction of hospitalisations and deaths among those who are vaccinated."
