“This pandemic is far from over and considering the incredible growth of omicron in the world, it is likely that new variants will appear,” he added.
On January 11, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) had considered that although the disease is still in the pandemic phase, the spread of the omicron variant will transform Covid-19 into an endemic disease with which humanity will have to learn to live.
“With the increase in immunity in the population and with omicron, there will be a lot of natural immunity in addition to vaccination and we will move quickly towards a scenario that will be closer to endemic,” said Marco Cavaleri, head of vaccination strategy at the EMA. , based in Amsterdam.
In Switzerland, Health Minister Alain Berset also considered last week that the omicron variant could be “the beginning of the end of the pandemic.”
But the head of the WHO is more cautious and stressed again that the omicron variant is not benign.
“In some countries, Covid cases seem to have reached a limit, which makes it possible to hope that the worst of this last wave has passed, but no country has totally come out of the problem,” he told the media on Tuesday.
He was very concerned that many countries have low rates of vaccination against Covid: “the population may be at greater risk of suffering from severe forms of the disease or of dying if they are not vaccinated.”
“Omicron is perhaps less severe on average, but to say that it is a benign disease is inaccurate, it affects the overall response and costs more lives,” he said. Tedros.
