WHO issues warning over Covid surge
A record 1.44mn virus cases were reported globally on Monday as Omicron variant surges, according to a Bloomberg report
PARIS/BERLIN: The World Health Organization warned on Tuesday that the Omicron coronavirus variant could lead to overwhelmed health care systems even though early studies suggest it leads to milder disease, as France and Germany brought back tough curbs to stamp out new infection surges.
Global Covid-19 cases hit a daily record on Monday, a year after vaccines first started rolling out and two years after the emergence of the virus, Bloomberg reported. The more than 1.44 million worldwide infections smashed the prior record after factoring out a day in December 2020 when Turkey backdated a significant number of cases.
A more conservative gauge the seven-day rolling average that smooths out one-time fluctuations and holiday reporting irregularities - is also at a record level, thanks to a tidal wave of
Omicron infections.
The seven-day rolling average of cases on Monday stood at about 841,000, a jump of 49% from a month ago when Omicron was first identified in southern Africa.
The silver lining is that daily Covid deaths haven’t significantly increased. The seven-day rolling average of deaths has hovered at about 7,000 since mid-october after falling from a Delta-driven peak, despite the emergence of Omicron.
The WHO warned against complacency even though preliminary findings suggest that Omicron could lead to milder disease.
“A rapid growth of Omicron... even if combined with a slightly milder disease, will still result in large numbers of hospitalisations, particularly amongst unvaccinated groups, and cause widespread disruption to health systems and other critical services,” warned WHO Europe’s Covid incident manager Catherine Smallwood.
Omicron accounts for 58.6% of new cases in US
Omicron accounted for an estimated 58.6% of sequenced US virus cases in the week ending December 25, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Nowcast model showed on Tuesday, up from an estimated 22.5% a week earlier. The once-dominant Delta variant accounted for 41.1% of cases in the most recent period, according to the CDC.
Nowcast estimates levels of variant prevalence based on genomic-sequencing data.
The US has halved the isolation period for asymptomatic cases to try and blunt the disruption, while France has ordered firms to have employees work from home at least three days a week.
Contact restrictions were in place in Germany for the second year in a row heading into the New Year, as Europe’s biggest economy shuttered nightclubs and forced sports competitions behind closed doors.
Sweden and Finland required negative tests for incoming nonresident travellers from Tuesday, a day after Denmark - which currently has the world’s highest rate of infection per capita applied the same measure.
Some 11,500 flights have been scrapped worldwide since Friday, and tens of thousands more delayed, during one of the year’s busiest travel periods.
Multiple airlines have blamed staffing shortages caused by spikes of Omicron cases.
Australia recorded another record surge in Covid-19 infections on Tuesday with 11,264 new cases of the coronavirus in the previous day.