The World Health Organization chief has warned that the rush in wealthy countries to roll out additional COVID vaccine doses is deepening the inequity in access to vaccines and is prolonging the pandemic.
“No country can boost its way out of the pandemic,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, a new South African study, along with data on hospitalisations and deaths in the country’s fourth wave of COVID infections, suggest that the risk of severe disease is lower with Omicron than with previous variants, a top scientist has said.
The United Kingdom has recorded 106,122 new daily coronavirus infections, the highest total of the pandemic and the first time the figure has topped 100,000.
In Nigeria, authorities have destroyed about one million expired doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, even as the West African country’s vaccination rate has almost doubled in the last week amid a spike in confirmed infections.
In Scotland, the Omicron variant of the coronavirus appears less likely to result in COVID-19 hospitalisation than Delta, according to an analysis of early data that was posted ahead of peer review on Wednesday.
The updated statistics agree with data released earlier on Wednesday from South Africa and from England, also in advance of peer review.
At the University of Edinburgh, researchers tracked nearly 152,500 patients diagnosed with COVID-19, including 22,205 infected with the Omicron variant. Half of the Omicron-infected patients were under the age of 40.
The number of Omicron patients who needed to be hospitalised was 68 percent lower than what the researchers would have expected, based on the rate in patients infected with Delta.
United States President Joe Biden has welcomed the US authorisation of Pfizer’s antiviral COVID-19 pill — the first at-home treatment for the coronavirus — calling it “promising”.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorised the drug for emergency use on Wednesday.
Top United States infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci has warned against attending large gatherings during the holiday season, saying that they are not considered safe even for vaccinated people and those who have received a booster dose.
“There are many of these parties that have 30, 40, 50 people in which you do not know the vaccination status of individuals. Those are the kind of functions in the context of COVID — and particularly in the context of Omicron — that you do not want to go to,” Fauci said at a White House briefing.
“So to the extent possible, we urge you to stay away from those situations that could put you at a higher risk.”
Faucci had said that small family gatherings “in the setting of the home” remain safe for vaccinated people.
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