The Omicron version has moved the COVID-19 pandemic to a new stage and could end it in Europe, the WHO Europe director said on Sunday.
“It is plausible that the region is moving towards the end of a kind of pandemic,” Hans Kluge told AFP news agency in an interview, adding that Omicron could infect 60 percent of Europeans by March.
Once the current surge of omicrons subsides across Europe, “there will be a global immunity for a few weeks and months, either thanks to vaccines or because people have immunity to infection, and also less seasonality.” “
“We anticipate that there will be a quiet period before COVID-19 returns at the end of the year, but the pandemic does not necessarily return,” Kluge said.
Top US scientist Anthony Fauci expressed similar hopes on Sunday.
He told the ABC News talk show “This Week” that “things are looking good”, with Covid-19 cases decreasing “rather rapidly” in parts of the United States.
Cautioning against overconfidence, he said if the number of cases continued to decline recently in regions like the US Northeast, “I believe you will start to see changes across the country”.
The WHO’s regional office for Africa also said last week that Covid cases in that region had dropped and deaths were falling for the first time since the peak of the Omicron-dominated fourth wave.
The Omicron variant, which studies have shown is more contagious than Delta, but typically causes less severe infections in vaccinated people, has raised long-awaited hopes that COVID-19 will turn from a pandemic like the seasonal flu. Beginning to shift to a more manageable endemic disease. ,
But Kluge cautioned that it is still too early to consider Covid-19 endemic.
Kluge said, “There’s a lot of talk about endemic but endemic means … it’s possible to predict what’s going to happen. This virus has surprised (us) more than once, so we have to be very careful.” “
With Omicron spreading so widely, other types may still emerge, he warned.
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Focus on ‘minimizing interference’
The European commissioner for internal markets, Thierry Breton, whose brief includes vaccine production, said on Sunday that it would be possible to adapt existing vaccines to any new versions that may emerge.
“We will be able to resist better, including the new variants,” he told French television LCI.
“We will be ready to adapt vaccines, especially those with mRNA, to adapt them into more virulent forms if necessary”.
In the WHO Europe region, which includes 53 countries including several countries in Central Asia, Omicron represented 15 per cent of new cases as of January 18, compared to 6.3 per cent a week ago, the health body said.
Omicron is now the dominant version in the European Union and the European Economic Area (EEA, or Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein), the EU health agency ECDC said last week.
Due to the very rapid spread of the variant across Europe, Kluge said the emphasis should be on “making major efforts to minimize disruption to hospitals, schools and the economy and protect vulnerable people” rather than measures to prevent transmission. .
Meanwhile, he urged people to take personal responsibility.
“If you don’t feel well, stay home, self-test. If you’re positive, isolate,” he said.
Kluge said the priority was to stabilize the situation in Europe, where vaccination levels range from 25 to 95 percent of the population in countries, placing varying pressures on hospitals and health care systems.
“Stabilization means the health system is no longer overwhelmed by COVID-19 and can continue with essential health services, which unfortunately have been really disrupted for cancer, heart disease and routine vaccinations.”
Asked whether a fourth dose would be necessary to end the pandemic, Kluge was cautious, saying only that “we know that immunity increases after each shot of the vaccine.”
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