GENEVA: The WHO on Wednesday issued a stern warning over the dangers of vaccination apathy and the European Union put mandatory jabs on the table, as the United States reported its first case of the fast-spreading Omicron strain of coronavirus.
The new version, first reported by South Africa to the World Health Organization a week ago, has increasingly come across continents, darkening economic forecasts and deepening fears of another hard winter in the Northern Hemisphere.
“Globally, we have a toxic mix of low vaccine coverage, and too little testing – a recipe for breeding and amplification variants,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, reminding the world that the delta variant “almost Responsible for all matters.”
“We need to use the tools we already have on hand to stop transmission and save lives from Delta. And if we do that, we’ll also stop transmission and save lives from Omicron.”
The WHO says it could take several weeks to understand whether Omicron is more transmitted, and whether it results in more severe disease – as well as how effective current treatments and vaccines are against the variant.
However, its detection and spread has highlighted that the nearly two-year global fight against COVID-19 is not over now.
In Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said it was “understandable and appropriate” to discuss how to “encourage and potentially think about compulsory vaccination” in the bloc – although only Only individual member states can enforce vaccine mandates.
Austria has already said it will mandate COVID jabs next February, Germany is considering a similar approach, and Greece said on Tuesday it would mandate vaccines for those over 60.
The United States, officially the hardest-hit country in the world, announced that it has detected its first Omicron case, a fully vaccinated traveler from South Africa recovering from mild symptoms.
Top US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci stressed that fully vaccinated adults should seek boosters only when they are able to give themselves the best possible protection.
“Our experience with variants like the delta variant is that even though the vaccine is not specifically targeted for the delta variant, when you get a high level of immune response, you get spillover protection,” he said.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also reported their first cases of Omicron, making the Gulf region the latest to be affected.
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The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control meanwhile recommended that children aged five to 11 years who are at risk of severe COVID-19 should be considered a “priority group” for vaccination.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has warned that Omicron threatens the world’s recovery and has cut growth projections for 2021 from 5.7 percent to 5.6 percent.
The Paris-based OECD said the recovery had “lost momentum and was becoming increasingly unbalanced” and would remain “precarious” until vaccines are deployed around the world.
Omicron has prompted governments around the world to reimpose travel restrictions, which mostly target southern Africa. Japan has suspended new flight bookings in the country.
On Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Guterres Antonio Guterres added his voice to a growing chorus of criticism against such sanctions, calling them “deeply unfair and punitive” as well as “ineffective”.
Rising infection rates have already prompted some European governments to restart mandatory mask-wearing, social-distancing measures, curfews or lockdowns in a desperate attempt to hospitalize hospitalizations, but businesses are facing another serious threat. Abandoned in fear of Christmas.
Portugal, which has one of the highest vaccination rates in Europe, has reintroduced the mask requirement in indoor settings, and aims to administer a third COVID-19 jab to about a fifth of its population by the end of the year.
Starting Wednesday, every adult in Italy became eligible for a COVID-19 booster shot, previously only open to people over the age of 40.
Despite new restrictions recently implemented in Denmark, the country on Wednesday reported a record number of new COVID-19 cases, with 5,120 infections in the past 24 hours.
Even as governments acted unilaterally in imposing travel restrictions, WHO member states came together in Geneva to work out an international agreement to deal with the next pandemic.
An intergovernmental negotiating body will be set up to reach an agreement on how to respond to future pandemics, with the first meeting to be held before March 1, 2022.
While the European summer of the transience of COVID-19 freedom may be over, Pacific nation Fiji, in the Southern Hemisphere, ended 615 days of international isolation and reopened to tourists on Wednesday.
Traditional dancers in grass skirts greeted vacationers from Sydney, the first of the expected influx of much-needed tourists in the coming weeks.
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