Omicron: 75,000 COVID deaths reported last week, WHO top official
- The bigger concern right now, I think, is the still increasing number of deaths, WHO's Maria Van Kerkhove said COVID deaths
Noting that Omicron is not mild, World Health Organisation (WHO) noted that last week as many as 75,000 COVID deaths were reported. Meanwhile, the number of cases reported was significantly lower than the previous weeks, but that was due to the drop in the number of testing.
"The bigger concern right now, I think, is the still increasing number of deaths," Maria Van Kerkhove said during a virtual panel discussion livestreamed on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
"In the last week alone, almost 75,000 people died reported to us and we know that that is an underestimate," she said.
Speaking on Omicron further, the WHO official said, among the sequences that are available we are seeing an increase in the number of sublineage BA.2 cases.
“Now among all subvariants, BA.2 is more transmissible than BA.1. However, there is no difference in terms of severity."
The UN health agency on Thursday released its weekly report on COVID-19 and according to it, just over 16 million new COVID-19 infections and about 75,000 deaths were reported worldwide last week.
The Western Pacific was the only region to report a rise in new weekly cases, an increase of about 19%, Southeast Asia reported a decrease of about 37%, the biggest drop globally. The number of deaths rose by 38% in the Middle East and by about one-third in the Western Pacific.
The biggest number of new COVID-19 cases was seen in Russia. Cases there and elsewhere in Eastern Europe doubled in recent weeks, driven by a surge of the omicron variant.
Regarding the decline in the number of cases, WHO's emergencies chief Mike Ryan said, “The countries claiming that their transmission has dropped from two to six weeks ago have likely seen a drop in testing rates.”
The WHO earlier this week urged governments to improve vaccination rates and rapid testing as infections have risen from the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, especially in east Europe.
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First Published:17 Feb 2022, 07:25 PM IST
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