'Important advice' from the World Health Organization on Omicron
The World Health Organization's chief scientist Somya Swaminathan urged people on Friday to avoid panic after the emergence of the new mutant of the Corona virus, Omicron, saying it was too early to confirm whether vaccines need to be modified.
Soumya Swaminathan said it was impossible to predict whether the Omicron would become the dominant strain.
Omicron has established itself in Asia, Africa, the Americas, the Middle East and Europe and has reached 7 of the 9 provinces in South Africa where it was first discovered, and many governments have tightened travel restrictions to keep out its danger.
According to "Sky News Arabia", Swaminathan said that Omicron is "quickly contagious", based on the data received from South Africa indicating that cases are doubling daily.
"How anxious can we be? We need to be prepared and be careful, not panic, because we are in a different situation than we were a year ago," she added.
She went on to say that the mutated version "Delta is responsible for 99 percent of infections in the world. This version is more transmissible and dominant to become the dominant (version) around the world. This is a possible (scenario), but it is not possible to predict its occurrence."
There remains a great deal of uncertainty about the Omicron strain, which has spread to at least 24 countries, at a time when parts of Europe are experiencing a spike in cases of the former delta mutant as winter approaches.
"We have to wait, and let's hope it will be milder," Swaminathan said. "But it's too early to draw conclusions about it."
The World Health Organization's director of emergencies, Mike Ryan, said there was no evidence to support the idea of modifying vaccines to be suitable for resistance to Omicron.
"We have very effective vaccines at the moment," Ryan said on a social media event. "We have to focus on distributing them more equitably. We need to focus on getting the most vulnerable groups vaccinated."
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