Endemic Covid Would Not Mean End Of Danger: WHO

The rapidly-spreading Omicron variant of Covid-19 is much more contagious than previous strains but seems to cause less serious disease for vaccinated people.

The World Health Organization on Tuesday warned against the notion that the Covid-19 pandemic becoming endemic would mean the disease was no longer dangerous.

"People talk about pandemic versus endemic," the WHO's emergencies director Michael Ryan told a virtual session of the World Economic Forum.

"Endemic malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people; endemic HIV; endemic violence in our inner cities.

"Endemic in itself does not mean good -- endemic just means it's here forever," Ryan told the Davos Agenda roundtable on vaccine equity.