The Omicron variant of Covid-19 is on track to infect more than half of Europeans, but it should not yet be seen as a flu-like endemic illness, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. Europe saw more than 7 million newly-reported cases in the first week of 2022, more than doubling over a two-week period, WHO's Europe director Hans Kluge told a news briefing. Fifty out of 53 countries in Europe and central Asia have logged cases of the more infectious variant, Kluge said. That would imply treating the virus as an endemic illness, rather than a pandemic, without recording every case and without testing all people presenting symptoms. We are certainly not at the point where we are able to call it endemic," Smallwood said.

Source: Dhaka Tribune January 12, 2022 03:48 UTC