People with health issues or inactivated vaccine should get Covid-19 booster: WHO
Many countries have been rolling out booster shots, targeting the elderly and people with underlying health issues, but worries about the new Omicron variant have prompted some to expand their use to larger portions of their populations.
DEC 22: Dr Michael Ryan says intensive care units (ICU) are busy despite officials saying numbers are "relatively low".
China figures show no-one died of Covid on Wednesday but there is scepticism about the disease's real impact.
In recent days hospitals in Beijing and other cities have been filling up as the latest Covid surge hits China.
Since 2020, China has imposed strict health restrictions as part of its zero Covid policy.
But, the government ended most of those measures two weeks ago after landmark protests against the strict controls.
The number of cases has since soared, raising fears of a high mortality rate among the elderly, who are particularly vulnerable.
Despite the rise, the official figures show only five people died from Covid on Tuesday and two on Monday.
It has led to WHO emergencies chief Dr Ryan urging China to provide more information about the latest spread of the virus.
He said: "In China, what's been reported is relatively low numbers of cases in ICUs, but anecdotally ICUs are filling up.
"We've been saying this for weeks that this highly infectious virus was always going to be very hard to stop completely, with just public health and social measures."
Speaking during a weekly news conference in Geneva WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he is "very concerned over the evolving situation in China".
He appealed for specific data on disease severity, hospital admissions and intensive care requirements.
Dr Ryan added that "vaccination is the exit strategy" to coronavirus outbreaks.
China has developed and produced its own vaccines, which have been shown to be less effective at protecting people against serious Covid illness and death than the mRNA vaccines used in much of the rest of the world.
His comments come as the German government announced on Wednesday it had sent its first batch of BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines to China.
The German vaccines are to be administered initially to expats in China - estimated to be about 20,000.
It is the first foreign Covid-19 vaccine to be delivered to China, although no details have been released about the time or the size of the delivery.
Last month during a visit to Beijing, Chancellor Olaf Scholz pressed for the vaccine to be made freely available to Chinese citizens as well.
A Covid "tsunami" threatens to overwhelm healthcare systems, the WHO said Wednesday, as record surges fuelled by the Omicron variant dampened New Year celebrations around the world once again.
Governments are walking a tightrope between antivirus restrictions and the need to keep societies and economies open, as the highly transmissible variant drove cases to levels never seen before in the United States, Britain, France and Denmark.
The blistering surge was illustrated by AFP's tally of 6.55 million new infections reported globally in the week ending Tuesday, the highest the figure has been since the World Health Organization declared a Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020.
"I am highly concerned that Omicron, being more transmissible, circulating at the same time as Delta, is leading to a tsunami of cases," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. "This is and will continue to put immense pressure on exhausted health workers, and health systems on the brink of collapse."
The variant has already started to overwhelm some hospitals in the United States, the hardest-hit nation where the seven-day average of new cases hit 265,427, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker.
Harvard epidemiologist and immunologist Michael Mina tweeted that the count was likely just the "tip of the iceberg" with the true number likely far higher because of a shortage of tests.
But there was some hope as data indicated a decoupling of the number of cases and hospitalisations. "We should not become complacent," top US infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci said Wednesday, but "all indications point to a lesser severity of Omicron". At a drive-through virus testing site in Miami, Florida, on Wednesday, there were long lines of cars with people waiting to provide samples.
"Half of my family has it, you know this new variant is very, very spreadable, like way more spreadable than the first time around," said resident Victoria Sierralta. "It's like we're back in the first stage of Covid. It's absolutely crazy."
- 'This is serious' -
Millions around the world will again welcome a new year in the shadow of the pandemic, which is known to have killed more than 5.4 million people so far, with festivities dampened or cancelled in many countries.
Greece on Wednesday banned music in bars and restaurants to try and limit New Year's Eve parties, with public events already cancelled. The mayor of Mexico's capital has cancelled the city's massive New Year's Eve celebrations after a spike in cases. Despite the outbreak concerns, the streets of Mexico City were busy on Wednesday.
"I don't think that such an event with such economic importance should be cancelled, however health comes before everything else," said 59-year-old teacher Victor Arturo Madrid Contreras.
With the "cancellation'' they are sending a message... 'You know what? This is serious'." British Prime Minister Boris Johnson meanwhile defended his decision not to clamp down on festivities over the holidays, saying around 90 percent of Covid patients in intensive care had not received a vaccine booster.
The number of people in hospital with the coronavirus topped 10,000 in England, the highest total since March, as Britain on Wednesday reported a new record of 183,037 daily cases.
The high take-up of boosters in England "is allowing us to go ahead with New Year in the cautious way that we are", Johnson said, despite new closures in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Records cases in France, Denmark
Across the Channel, France too hit a new daily record of more than 200,000 cases -- more than double the number on Christmas Day -- as it extended its closure of nightclubs into January.
Wearing masks outdoors will become compulsory in Paris on Friday for everyone over the age of 11 except those inside vehicles, cyclists, users of other two-wheelers such as scooters and those participating in sports.
Denmark, which currently has the world's highest rate of infection per person, recorded a fresh record of 23,228 new cases, which authorities attributed in part to the large numbers of tests carried out after Christmas celebrations. Portugal also saw a record with nearly 27,000 cases reported in 24 hours.
DECEMBER 15: Cases of the heavily mutated variant have been confirmed in 77 countries.
But at a press conference, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was probably in many others that had yet to detect it.
Dr Tedros said he was concerned that not enough was being done to tackle the variant.
"Surely, we have learned by now that we underestimate this virus at our peril. Even if Omicron does cause less severe disease, the sheer number of cases could once again overwhelm unprepared health systems," he said.
The Omicron variant was first identified in South Africa in November, and the country has since seen a surge in infections. President Cyril Ramaphosa has tested positive for Covid-19, and is currently isolating with mild symptoms.
A number of countries have introduced travel bans affecting South Africa and its neighbours following the emergence of Omicron, but this has failed to stop it from spreading around the world.
In the press conference on Tuesday, Dr Tedros reiterated concerns about vaccine inequity, as some countries accelerate rollouts of a booster shot in response to Omicron.
Recent studies of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine showed it produced far fewer neutralising antibodies against Omicron than against the original strain, but that this deficit could be reversed by a third, booster, jab.
Dr Tedros said boosters "could play an important role" in curbing the spread of Covid-19, but that it was "a question of prioritisation".
"The order matters. Giving boosters to groups at low risk of severe disease or death simply endangers the lives of those at high risk who are still waiting for their primary doses because of supply constraints," he said.
Supplies to the global vaccine-sharing programme Covax have increased in recent months. But world health officials fear a repeat of a shortfall of tens of millions of doses which occurred in the middle of this year, partly as a result of India suspending exports during a surge in cases there.
In poorer countries, some vulnerable people are yet to receive a single dose.
