Covid-19: 13 cr infected, 500k died after Omicron surfaced, says WHO
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: About 130 million people were infected and 500,000 died across the planet since the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, detected in South Africa, was declared a Variant of Concern (VoC) in November 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.
The pandemic has killed nearly 5.75 million people since it emerged in China in December 2019. About 10.25 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses have so far been administered globally.
The global health agency’s Incident Manager, Abdi Mahamud, said in Geneva on Tuesday these numbers were “beyond tragic.”
Within 8 to 10 weeks, a highly transmissible Omicron rapidly overtook the previous Delta variant as the world’s dominant Covid-19 spreader, although it appeared to cause less severe illness.
“In the age of effective vaccines, half-a-million people dying, it’s really something,” Mahamud told a live interaction on the WHO’s social media channels, the media reported.
“While everyone was saying Omicron is milder, (they) missed the point that half-a-million people have died since this was detected.”
The WHO’s Technical Head for Covid-19, Maria Van Kerkhove, said the sheer number of Omicron cases was “astounding”, while the true number of cases and deaths would be much higher than just those known about.
“It makes the previous peaks look almost flat,” she said.
“We’re still in the middle of this pandemic. I hope we’re getting closer to the end,” she said. “Many countries have not passed their peak of Omicron yet.”
Van Kerkhove said she was extremely concerned that the number of deaths had increased for several weeks in a row. “This virus continues to be dangerous.”
The WHO is tracking four sub-lineages of Omicron. While the BA.1 sub-strain was dominant, BA.2 is more transmissible and is expected to account for an increasing share of Omicron cases.
Van Kerkhove said there was no sign to suggest that BA.2 resulted in more severe Covid-19 disease than BA.1, but emphasized that it was still “very early days” in evidence-gathering.
Mahamud said it was as yet unknown whether someone could be infected with both BA.1 and BA.2 at the same time.
