WHERE: Omicron can cause more dangerous variants of Covid-19

The multiplication of Omicron cases around the world could pose the risk of a new, more dangerous variant of Covid-19, the World Health Organization warned today.

Although the variant is spreading rapidly worldwide, it looks less pathogenic than what was initially feared, and has raised hopes that the pandemic could be overcome.

But Catherine Smallwood, the WHO’s chief emergency officer, told AFP that a sharp rise in infection rates could have the opposite effect.

“The more Omicron spreads, the more it is transmitted and the more it reproduces, the more likely it is that a new variant will be produced,” he said. “Today Omicron is deadly, it can cause death (…) Maybe a little less than the Delta, but who can say what the next variant can cause?”

Europe has recorded more than 100 million cases of Covid since the beginning of the pandemic, and more than five million new cases in the last week of 2021, which “overshadows almost everything we have seen so far,” Smallwood added.

“We are in a very dangerous phase, the rates of infection are rising especially in western Europe and the real impact of this is not yet clear,” he said.

Although “on an individual level, the risk of hospitalization is probably lower” with the Omicron variant than with the Delta as a whole, Omicron could pose a much greater threat due to the number of cases, he added.

“When the number of cases increases so much, it is likely that a much larger number of people with serious illnesses will be hospitalized or even die,” he said.

The United Kingdom, which announced today that it has recorded more than 200,000 new daily cases for the first time, is threatened with a hospital crisis due to a shortage of staff caused by the Omicron wave. Neighboring France has recorded about 270,000 cases, a record number since the beginning of the pandemic.

Smallwood said it expects similar scenarios in other European countries: “Even in large and sophisticated health systems there are real challenges at the moment, and this is likely to be repeated in the region as Omicron causes an increase in cases.”

Source: AMPE