“The preliminary data doesn’t indicate that this is more severe. In fact, if anything, the direction is towards less severity,” said WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan. 
“We have highly effective vaccines that have proved effective against all the variants so far, in terms of severe disease and hospitalisation... There’s no reason to expect that it wouldn’t be so” for Omicron, he added.

However, Ryan acknowledged that it was possible that existing vaccines might prove less effective against Omicron, which counts more than 30 mutations on the spike protein that allows it to invade cells.

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Dr Fauci agrees

Top US scientist Anthony Fauci echoed the WHO’s view, saying Omicron did not appear worse than prior strains based on early indications and was possibly milder. The new variant is “clearly highly transmissible”, very likely more so than Delta, Fauci said. “It almost certainly is not more severe than Delta,” he added. “There is some suggestion that it might even be less severe.” But he noted it was important to not over-interpret this data because the populations being followed skewed young and were less likely to become hospitalised. Severe disease can also take weeks to develop. 

‘Pfizer booster protects against omicron’ 

Pfizer said Wednesday that a booster dose of its COVID-19 vaccine may protect against the new omicron variant even though the initial two doses appear significantly less effective. Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said lab tests showed a booster dose increased by 25-fold the level of so-called neutralizing antibodies against omicron. Pfizer said the preliminary laboratory data hasn’t yet undergone scientific review.

Weekly COVID cases dip in Europe: WHO 

The World Health Organization’s European region has recorded a slight drop in both COVID-19 cases and deaths last week after facing a string of weekly increases.

3,94,970
No. of new cases reported globally in the past 24 hours

26,57,13,467
Total no. of cases worldwide

52,60,888
Total no. of deaths worldwide

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