Digital Desk: On Tuesday, the World Health Organization announced that half a million COVID-19 deaths had been reported since the Omicron variant was found, describing the figure as "beyond terrible."
Since Omicron was labeled a variety of concerns in late November, the WHO's incident manager, Abdi Mahamud, said 130 million cases and 500,000 deaths have been reported worldwide.
Because it is more transmissible, it has quickly surpassed Delta as the world's most common Covid variety. However, it appears to produce less severe sickness.
"In the age of effective vaccines, half a million people dying, it's really something," Mahamud told a live interaction on the WHO's social media channels.
"While everyone was saying Omicron is milder, (they) missed the point that half a million people have died since this was detected.
"It's beyond tragic."
The sheer number of Omicron cases was "astonishing," according to Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's technical lead on COVID-19, and the total number of cases and deaths would be substantially greater than those known about.
"It practically flattens out the prior peaks," she remarked.
"We're still in the midst of the outbreak. I'm hoping we're nearing the end of it "she stated "Many countries have yet to reach their Omicron peak."
According to Van Kerkhove's advertisements, the number of deaths has been rising for several weeks in a row.
"This virus is still hazardous," she stated.
Omicron is divided into four sub-lineages, according to the WHO. While the BA.1 substrain was the most common, the BA.2 substrain is more transmissible and is predicted to account for a growing proportion of Omicron cases.
Van Kerkhove said there was no proof thus far that BA.2 caused more severe Covid illness than BA.1, but added that evidence-gathering was still in its "early days."
It's still unclear if someone may be infected with both BA.1 and BA.2 at the same time, according to Mahamud.
According to an AFP figure obtained from government sources on Tuesday, COVID-19 has killed nearly 5.75 million people since it first appeared in China in December 2019, and half a million COVID-19 deaths had been reported since the Omicron variant was discovered last year.
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