Omicron is quickly overtaking the Delta variant of COVID-19 and becoming dominant around the world, a senior WHO official has warned, with the global health agency cautioning that there is "increasing evidence" Omicron is able to evade immunity but has less disease severity as compared to other variants, report agencies.
It could take some time for Omicron to overtake Delta in some countries, because it depends on the level of circulation of the Delta variant in those countries, Infectious Disease Epidemiologist and COVID-19 Technical Lead at the World Health Organisation (WHO) Maria Van Kerkhove said on Tuesday.
"Omicron has been detected in all countries where we have good sequencing and it's likely to be in all countries around the world. It is quickly, in terms of its circulation, overtaking Delta. And so Omicron is becoming the dominant variant that is being detected," Kerkhove said during a virtual questions and answers session.
She further cautioned that even though there is some information that Omicron causes less severe disease than Delta, "it's not a mild disease" because "people are still being hospitalized for Omicron."
Meanwhile, the overall number of Covid cases has now surpassed 314 million, with a spike in cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus across the world.
According to Worldometers tally, the total case count mounted to 314,454,593 while the death toll from the virus reached 5,523,858 Wednesday evening.
More than 9.54 billion doses have been administered across 184 countries, according to data collected by Bloomberg. The latest rate was roughly 39.8 million doses a day.
Meanwhile, Pfizer Inc said on Wednesday booster doses of its COVID-19 vaccine can be administered along with its pneumonia vaccine and produced strong safety and immune responses in people aged 65 and above in a late-stage study.
The study, initiated in May, tested the company's next-generation pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, PREVNAR 20, with a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 shot in 570 participants.
The aim of the study was to test the safety of the combination and the immune response after adding the pneumonia vaccine to the existing COVID-19 vaccine.
The company said responses elicited by PREVNAR 20 and booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine were similar when given together or with placebo.
Another report adds: India's Bharat Biotech said on Wednesday a booster shot of its Covaxin COVID-19 vaccine administered six months after the last of two doses neutralises both the omicron and delta variants of the coronavirus.
The study was conducted at the Emory Vaccine Center in Atlanta based on blood serum collected from 13 individuals, 28 days after their booster shot. It was sponsored by Bharat Biotech's partner Ocugen Inc.
"The neutralisation activity of Covaxin-boosted sera was comparable to what has been observed in mRNA vaccine-boosted sera against the omicron variant," Bharat Biotech said in a statement. "More than 90 percent of all individuals boosted with Covaxin showed neutralising antibodies."
Covaxin, India's first domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine, received a WHO emergency-use listing late last year. More than 201 million doses of it have been administered in the country.
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