(Stockholm) The multiplication of cases of Omicron around the world could increase the risk of the appearance of a new, more dangerous variant of COVID-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Tuesday.
Although the variant is spreading like wildfire around the world, it appears to be less pathogenic than initially feared and has raised hopes that the pandemic could be overcome.
But Catherine Smallwood, a WHO emergency officer, told AFP that skyrocketing infection rates could have the opposite effect.
“The more Omicron spreads, the more it is transmitted and the more it replicates, the more likely it is to generate a new variant,” she said. “Currently Omicron is fatal, it can cause death […] Maybe a little less than Delta, but who can say what the next variant might generate? ”
Europe has recorded more than 100 million cases of COVID-19 since the start 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, ”added Mme Smallwood.
“We are in a very dangerous phase, the rates of contamination are increasing very significantly in Western Europe, and the real impact of this is not yet clear,” she said.
While “at an individual level the risk of hospitalization is probably less” with the Omicron variant than with Delta, overall Omicron could pose a greater threat due to the number of cases, she continued.
“When the number of cases increases so significantly, it is likely that many more people with serious illnesses will end up in hospital or even die,” she said.
The United Kingdom, which announced Tuesday to have identified for the first time more than 200,000 new daily cases, is threatened with a hospital crisis due to the lack of personnel caused by the wave of Omicron. Neighboring France should approach 300,000 cases on Tuesday, according to the authorities.
Mme Smallwood said he expected similar scenarios in other European countries: “Even in sophisticated and large health systems, there are real difficulties right now, and it is likely that this will happen again in the next few days. region as Omicron leads to an increase in cases ”.