According to the forecast shared by WHO top officials more than half of Europe will suffer from the highly contagious variant of COVID-19, Omicron in the next couple of months. As per one of the top line directors at WHO, there is a sweep of the west to east tidal wave of infection of Omicron which in the region over and above the pre-existent delta variant.
The variant is dominantly stamping its spread across the west of Europe and is now charging towards the Balkans. The region has already seen above 7 million patients in the first week of this year. This figure is double to the two-week prior period. With the rate things are moving, the health metrics and evaluation institute predict that more than half of the regional population will be under the clutches of omicron and that too in the next 6-8 weeks.
The variant has swept the entire region at a brisk pace and countries, big or small, developed or developing are already introducing various social restrictions to curb its unwanted expanse. All the shreds of evidence however suggest that the omicron is less lethal than the delta variant but the sheer numbers are enough to overwhelm the health care system. One of the professors at Oxford believes that omicron is not the same virus as its predecessors and the horrific scenes that all had to go through of people succumbing prematurely, hospitals overflowing with admissions is history.
As far as the disease is concerned, the variant seems to be less impactful with many people being hospitalized for a less period of time. Oxygen high flow isn’t the need with an average stay of patients being three days max. The fact is that the places where COVID incident rates have been higher tagged with low vaccination turnouts, the mortality rate is stable.
