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ARCHIVED - WHO predicts half of Europeans will have Omicron within 8 weeks
The more transmissible Covid strain is now the dominant one in Western Europe
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has predicted on Tuesday January 11 that more than half the population of Europe will be infected with the Omicron variant in the next six to eight weeks. Speaking at a press conference, regional director Hans Kluge said he has largely based this calculation on the rate at which the new Covid mutation is sweeping across Western Europe.
Mr Kluge highlighted the fact that 7 million new Covid cases have been reported in the first week of 2022 and that Omicron is now present in 50 out of 53 countries in Europe and Central Asia. In Spain, experts have suggested this week that the more transmissible variant could be responsible for up to 90.9% of all cases.
The WHO has explained that the speed of the contagion “has not been seen in any of the previous variants” and that it is sweeping the globe despite strong vaccination campaigns. At the same time, hospital beds are filling up with more and more Covid patients, “many of them unvaccinated”. An added problem is the number of people in Eastern countries who have yet to be immunised.
For this reason, Mr Kluge cautioned against Spanish President Pedro Sánchez’s plan of treating coronavirus as an endemic disease, claiming that this is still premature.
The director concluded that the pandemic has already surprised us “more than once” and so “it is not a good idea” to make predictions at this point. Instead, he urged nations to focus on the fundamental objective of 2022: “to stabilise the pandemic”.
Image: AEMPS
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