WHO: Half of Europe on track to catch Covid-19 virus
With almost eight million infections in the last week, Europe is reporting the largest number of deaths and cases worldwide.
More than half of the people in Europe are likely to catch Omicron by March, the World Health Organisation says, as the World Bank warned the contagious Covid-19 variant could hamper global economic recovery.
Top US government scientist Anthony Fauci said despite soaring cases and record hospitalisations, America was approaching the “threshold” of transitioning to living with the coronavirus as a manageable disease.
The highly transmissible Omicron strain has swept across countries, forcing governments to impose fresh measures and some to roll out vaccine booster shots, although the WHO on Tuesday night said repeating booster doses of the original Covid jabs was not a viable strategy against emerging variants.
The UN body called for new vaccines that better protect against transmission. “A vaccination strategy based on repeated booster doses of the original vaccine composition is unlikely to be appropriate or sustainable,” a WHO vaccine advisory group said.
With almost eight million recorded infections over the seven days to Tuesday, Europe is reporting the largest number of deaths and cases worldwide, according to an Agence France-Presse tally.
Europe is at the epicentre of alarming new outbreaks and the WHO said on Tuesday that Omicron could infect half of all people in the region at current rates.
The WHO’s regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, described a “new west-to-east tidal wave sweeping across” the region.
“The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation forecasts that more than 50 per cent of the population in the region will be infected with Omicron in the next six to eight weeks,” he said. The WHO’s European region covers 53 countries and territories including several in Central Asia, and Dr Kluge said 50 of them had Omicron cases. However, he stressed that “approved vaccines do continue to provide good protection against severe disease and death – including for Omicron”.
The European Medicines Agency said the spread of Omicron was pushing Covid towards being an endemic disease that humanity could live with, even if it remained a pandemic for now.
Speaking to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Dr Fauci said eliminating Covid was unrealistic and “Omicron, with its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will ultimately find just about everybody”.
“There’s no way we’re going to eradicate this” virus, said the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, given its contagiousness, its propensity to mutate into new variants and the large pool of unvaccinated people. Those up to date with their vaccines remain well protected against severe outcomes, but vaccine efficacy against infection has fallen.
Yet “as Omicron goes up and down”, the country will hopefully enter a new phase “where there’ll be enough protection in (the) community, enough drugs available so that when someone does get infected and is in a high risk group, it will be very easy to treat that person,” Dr Fauci said.
“When we get there, there’s that transition, and we may be on the threshold of that right now,” he said, while also stressing that with the US currently recording almost a million infections a day, nearly 150,000 people in hospital and more than 1200 daily deaths, “we’re not at that point”.
Official data showed there were 145,982 Covid hospitalisations in the US, even though a significant per centage is thought to be hospitalised “with” the disease rather than because of it.
The World Bank predicted global economic growth would decelerate in 2022 as Omicron risked exacerbating labour shortages and supply chain snarls. In its latest Global Economic Prospects report, it cut its forecast for world economic growth this year to 4.1 per cent after the 5.5 per cent rebound last year. World Bank president David Malpass said the pandemic could leave a “permanent scar on development” as poverty, nutrition and health indicators moved in the wrong direction.
AFP
More Coverage
‘Starved, emaciated, pained’: Israel shocked at sight of freed hostages
Israeli president accuses Hamas of a crime against humanity as the families of Or Levy, Ohad Ben Ami and Eli Sharabi react in horror at the men’s frailty after they were paraded on stage by their captors.
US judge blocks DOGE from Treasury data
The order says anyone who has accessed data from the Treasury Department’s records since Donald Trump was inaugurated must ‘immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded.’