The increase in omicron cases worldwide could increase the risk of new, more dangerous variants appearing, warned the World Health Organization (WHO) in Europe.
Although omicron is spreading rapidly around the world, it appears to be much less serious than previously feared and has raised hopes that the coronavirus pandemic can be overcome.
However, the WHO head of emergencies, Catherine Smallwood, pointed out that the increase in infection rates could have the opposite effect.
“The more omicron is spread, the more it is transmitted and the more it replicates and the more likely it is to generate a new variant,” Smallwood said.
Europe has registered more than 100 million cases of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, and more than five million new cases in the last week of 2021, “almost overshadowing what we have seen in the past,” he stressed.
“We are in a very dangerous phase, we are seeing infection rates increase very significantly in Western Europe and the full impact of this is not yet clear,” he added.
According to Smallwood, the UK health crisis, caused by understaffing due to the wave of omicron infections, could be repeated in other European countries.
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