Don’t treat Omicron COVID-19 variant like the flu, WHO warns
Global News
Evidence, however, is emerging that Omicron is affecting the upper respiratory tract more than the lungs, causing milder symptoms than previous variants.
The Omicron variant of COVID-19 is on track to infect more than half of Europeans, but it should not yet be seen as a flu-like endemic illness, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.
Europe saw more than seven million newly-reported cases in the first week of 2022, more than doubling over a two-week period, WHO’s Europe director Hans Kluge told a news briefing.
“At this rate, 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-eight weeks,” Kluge said, referring to a research center at the University of Washington.
Fifty out of 53 countries in Europe and central Asia have logged cases of the more infectious variant, Kluge said.
Evidence, however, is emerging that Omicron is affecting the upper respiratory tract more than the lungs, causing milder symptoms than previous variants.
But the WHO has cautioned more studies are still needed to prove this.
On Monday, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said it may be time to change how it tracks COVID-19’s evolution to instead use a method similar to flu, because its lethality has fallen.
That would imply treating the virus as an endemic illness, rather than a pandemic, without recording every case and without testing all people presenting symptoms.