(Geneva) The World Health Organization (WHO) deplored on Tuesday that there have been half a million deaths from COVID-19 since the discovery of the Omicron variant and although vaccines exist, qualifying this assessment of “more than tragic”.
Posted yesterday at 5:09 p.m.
“While everyone was saying the more benign Omicron, we missed the fact that half a million people have died since it was detected,” said WHO incident manager Abdi Mahamud. .
“In the age of effective vaccines, half a million people dying is really something […] It is more than tragic, ”he added, during an exchange organized on social networks by the organization.
According to Mahamud, 130 million cases and 500,000 deaths have been recorded worldwide since Omicron was deemed “worrying” by the WHO in late November.
This variant has since quickly overtaken Delta as the world’s dominant variant, as it is more contagious, although it appears to cause less severe disease.
The number of Omicron cases is “staggering”, “previous peaks appear almost flat”, even though the actual number of cases and deaths would be much higher than the official one, another WHO official commented, Maria Van Kerkhove.
“We are still in the middle of this pandemic. I hope we are getting closer to its end” but “many countries are not yet past their Omicron peak” and “this virus continues to be dangerous”, she warned.
COVID-19 has killed nearly 5.75 million people since it emerged in China in December 2019, according to an AFP tally compiled Tuesday from official sources.
Over 10 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered worldwide.