The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said today, Tuesday, that the Covid-19 pandemic "is not over," warning against the idea that the mutant omicron does no harm.
"Omicron continues to sweep the world... Make no mistake, Omicron causes hospitalizations and deaths, and even less severe cases are overburdening healthcare institutions," Ghebreyesus said at a press conference in Geneva.
"This epidemic is not over yet, and given the large outbreak of omicron around the world, it is possible that new mutants will emerge," he added.
And on January 11, the European Medicines Agency considered that although the disease is still in the epidemic stage, the spread of the mutated Omicron will turn Covid-19 into an endemic disease that humanity can learn to adapt to.
"With increased immunity in the population, and with Omicron, there will be a lot of natural immunity in addition to vaccination," said Marco Cavalieri, a vaccine strategy officer at the Amsterdam-based European Medicines Agency. "We will move quickly towards a more endemic scenario."
In Switzerland, Health Minister Alain Berset considered last week that the mutant Omicron may be the "beginning of the end" of the epidemic.
But the head of the World Health Organization seemed more cautious, stressing once again that the mutant Omicron remains dangerous.
"In some countries it seems that Covid-19 cases have reached their peak, which gives hope that the worst from the latest wave is behind us, but no country has rid of the epidemic," he told reporters.
But Ghebreyesus warned that "more infections mean more hospitalizations, more deaths, more people who will not be able to work, including professors and medical staff, and more risks of another mutant that is more contagious and kills more than Omicron."
He was particularly concerned that many countries had low rates of vaccination against COVID-19.
"People are more likely to contract severe forms of disease or die if they are not vaccinated," he said.
"Omicron may be less dangerous, but claims that it is a simple disease are misleading and harm the overall response and cause more lives to be lost," Ghebreyesus said.