WHO laments ‘tragic’ 500k COVID death toll since Omicron
By Nidz Godino
“In the age of effective vaccines, half a million people dying, it’s really something,” World Health Organization (WHO) social media channels lamented half a million COVID-19 deaths had been recorded since Omicron variant was discovered, calling the toll “beyond tragic.”
The WHO’s incident manager Abdi Mahamud said 130 million cases and 500,000 deaths had been recorded globally since Omicron was declared variant of concern in late November.
It has since rapidly overtaken Delta as world’s dominant COVID variant because it is more transmissible, though it appears to cause less severe illness.
“While everyone was saying Omicron is milder, they missed the point that half a million people have died since this was detected,” he said.
“It’s beyond tragic.”
Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, said sheer number of known Omicron cases was “astounding”, while true number would be much higher.
“It makes previous peaks look almost flat, we’re still in the middle of this pandemic,many countries have not passed their peak of Omicron yet, ” she said.
Van Kerkhove said she was extremely concerned that numbers of deaths had increased for several weeks in a row.
“This virus continues to be dangerous,” she said.
In their weekly COVID-19 epidemiological update WHO said nearly 68,000 new deaths were reported last week up seven percent compared to the previous week.
Meanwhile the number of new weekly COVID cases decreased by 17 percent to nearly 19.3 million.
The WHO’s Europe region accounted for 58% of new confirmed cases last week, and 35% of new deaths. The Americas made up 23% of new cases and 44% of new deaths.
The pandemic is currently “characterized by continued rapid global spread of the Omicron variant,” the report said, with the variant now detected “in almost all countries”.
The WHO said Omicron accounted for 96.7% of samples collected in the last 30 days that have been sequenced and uploaded to the GISAID global science initiative. Delta now makes up just 3.3%.
The report said limited data was available for the efficacy of vaccines against Omicron.
“However, available estimates show reduced protection of the primary series COVID-19 vaccines against the Omicron variant for all outcomes severe disease, symptomatic disease, and infection than has been observed previously for other variants of concern,” it said.
But it added that booster jabs “substantially” improve efficacy.
COVID-19 has killed more than 5.7 million people since it emerged in China in December 2019, according to the report, while over 392 million cases have been recorded.
Nearly 10.25 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered globally.
Australia’s COVID-19 hospital cases and people admitted to intensive care continued to trend lower as authorities urged people to get their vaccine boosters to prevent serious illness and deaths from coronavirus.
Fueled by Omicron variant, Australia’s total infections have now touched nearly 2.4 million, almost 10% of the country’s population, with about 2.2 million in the last two months alone.
But Omicron’s less lethal impact and the gathering pace of Australia’s program of booster doses have fed optimism that country’s worst outbreak of the pandemic may have peaked.
Dominic Perrottet, the leader of New South Wales (NSW), said he was seeing “so many green shoots” amid steady decline in hospital cases.
Just over 2,000 people with COVID-19 are in hospitals in the state, Australia’s most populous and the hardest hit during Omicron wave. That’s the lowest tally in three weeks.
“It is pleasing to see the decline in hospitalizations and ICU admissions and we are hoping that trend continues,” NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said during a media briefing.
Australia had been largely successful in limiting COVID-19 earlier in the pandemic, helped by tough travel and social distancing restrictions. It began easing curbs late last year after reaching higher vaccination rates despite threat from Omicron variant.
Earlier , Prime Minister Scott Morrison, facing criticism over his handling of the Omicron outbreak, said Australia will fully reopen its borders to vaccinated travelers from Feb. 21 after nearly two years.
More than 28,000 new cases were reported in the country on Tuesday, up around 5,000 from day earlier, but well below the pandemic peak of 150,000 last month. A total of 55 new deaths were reported, taking the toll since the start of the pandemic to 4,303.
ISKUP! 