G7 health ministers call for urgent action to combat Omicron
LONDON: G7 health ministers on Monday called for “urgent action” to combat the newly identified Omicron Covid-19 variant spreading across the world as US President Joe Biden said the strain is “not a cause for panic”.
Biden told Americans he did not foresee new lockdowns or extending travel restrictions for now because of Omicron.
While no deaths have yet been reported from Omicron, and it remains unclear how infectious and how resistant the strain may prove to vaccines, its emergence underscores how besieged the world remains by Covid-19, nearly two years after the first cases were recorded.
Many governments, particularly in western Europe, had already struggled with rapid rises in cases and have reintroduced mandatory maskwearing, social-distancing measures, curfews or lockdowns – leaving businesses fearing another grim Christmas.
Following emergency talks, G7 health ministers said “the global community is faced with the threat of a new, at a first evaluation, highly transmissible variant of Covid-19, which requires urgent action.”
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said the overall risk from Omicron was “very high”
and warned that any major surge would put pressure on health systems and cause more deaths.
Scientists in South Africa said they had detected the new variant with at least 10 mutations, compared with three for Beta or two for Delta – the strain that hit the global recovery and sent millions worldwide back into lockdown.
Biden stressed that the United States was in a good position to
control Omicron's spread.
“We have more tools today to fight the variant than we've ever had before,” he said, adding that his chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci expects current vaccines to work against the new variant, with boosters enhancing protection.
US drugmaker Pfizer and the backers of Russian vaccine Sputnik V said separately they were working on versions of their Covid-19 vaccines targeting Omicron.