Over half the population of Europe will contract the Omicron variant in the next six to eight weeks, a World Health Organisation expert has claimed.
Regional director of the WHO Hans Kluge warned that the Omicron variant represented a “new west-to-east tidal wave sweeping across” the European region.
“At this rate, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) forecasts that more than 50% of the population in the region will be infected with Omicron in the next six to eight weeks,” he said.
WHO says 26 of those countries reported that over 1% of their populations were “catching Covid-19 each week,” as of 10 January, and that the region had seen over seven million new virus cases reported in the first week of 2022 alone.
The WHO’s European region is made up of 53 countries and territories including several in Central Asia.
Mr Kluge noted that 50 of them had confirmed cases of the Omicron variant.
Mr Kluge said the variant was confirmed to be more transmissible and “the mutations it has enable it to adhere to human cells more easily, and it can infect even those who have been previously infected or vaccinated.”
However, Mr Kluge also stressed that “approved vaccines do continue to provide good protection against severe disease and death, including for Omicron.”
