GENEVA (Dispatches) – The World Health Organization (WHO) has insisted that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 is killing people across the globe and should not be dismissed as mild.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the record numbers of people catching the new variant -- which is rapidly out-competing the previously-dominant Delta variant in many countries -- meant hospitals were being overwhelmed.
Case counts, though imperfect, have been a key barometer throughout the pandemic, a benchmark not only for governments implementing mitigation measures but also for people trying to discern the threat in their own communities.
Yet surpassing 300 million known cases — a milestone that was reached on Thursday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University — comes as a growing number of experts argue that it is time to stop focusing on case numbers.
“While Omicron does appear to be less severe compared to Delta, especially in those vaccinated, it does not mean it should be categorized as mild,” Tedros told a press conference.
“Just like previous variants, Omicron is hospitalising people and it is killing people,” he explained.
“In fact, the tsunami of cases is so huge and quick, that it is overwhelming health systems around the world.”
Just under 9.5 million new Covid-19 cases were reported to the WHO last week -- a record, up 71 percent on the week before.
But even this was an underestimate, Tedros said, as it did not reflect the backlog of testing around the Christmas-New Year holidays, positive self-tests not registered, and overburdened surveillance systems missing cases.
Tedros used his first speech of 2022 to slam the way rich nations hogged available vaccine doses last year, saying it had created the perfect breeding ground for the emergence of virus variants.
He therefore urged the world to share out vaccine doses more fairly in 2022, to end the “death and destruction” of Covid-19.
Ninety-two of the WHO’s 194 member states missed the target set for the end of 2021 -- indeed 36 of them had not even jabbed the first 10 percent, largely due to being unable to access doses.
On the current pace of vaccine roll-out, 109 countries will miss that target.

Omicron Pushes U.S. COVID Hospitalizations Toward Record High

COVID-19 hospitalizations in the United States are poised to hit a new high as early as Friday, according to a Reuters tally, surpassing the record set in January of last year as the highly contagious Omicron variant fuels a surge in the number of cases.
Hospitalizations have increased steadily since late December as Omicron quickly overtook Delta as the dominant strain of the coronavirus in the United States, although experts say Omicron will likely prove less deadly than prior variants.
While deemed less severe, health officials have nevertheless warned that the sheer number of infections caused by Omicron could strain hospital systems, some of which have already shown signs of distress, partly due to staffing shortages.

Britain Calls in Military to Help

Britain’s Ministry of Defense on Friday said that it had begun the deployment of the military to support hospitals experiencing staff shortages and extreme pressures due to record COVID-19 cases in the country.
The government said that 200 Armed Forces personnel had been made available to support the National Health Service (NHS) in London for the next three weeks.
Britain has seen a surge in coronavirus cases due to the Omicron variant, and has reported over 150,000 new cases each day over the last week.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that England can withstand the surge without new restrictions thanks to vaccination and the lower severity of the variant, but has warned of a challenging few weeks, as staffing is disrupted as people self-isolate.
In India, the daily COVID-19 cases jumped to 117,100 on Friday, a five-fold increase in a week and on course to overtake its previous infection peak as the fast-spreading Omicron variant replaces Delta in cities.
Government officials have privately said they are working under the assumption that daily infections will surpass the record of more than 414,000 set in May, given what has happened in countries, such as the United States where daily cases have risen past 1 million.
“We will clearly surpass our record shortly and reach a new peak by early February,” M.D. Gupte, a former director of the state-run National Institute of Epidemiology and an immunization adviser to the government, told Reuters.
“Given the size of our population, we will report more daily cases than the U.S. But what we have seen is that these cases are much more mild, so the need for hospitalization and oxygen and all that is not picking up.”
He said India’s high rate of infection during a previous major wave in April and May, as well as vaccinations, would mean a reduction in the severity of the illness for those infected by the Omicron variant.