The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged people to postone parties and other events this festive season, warning that holiday celebrations will lead to “increased cases, overwhelmed health systems and more deaths” amid rising cases of the Omicron variant in several countries.   

“An event cancelled is better than a life cancelled,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing in Geneva. 

He also said that the Omicron variant of the coronavirus is spreading quicker than Delta and is infecting people who have been vaccinated or who have recovered from COVID-19.

Meanwhile, WHO head scientist Soumya Swaminathan said it would be “unwise” to conclude from early evidence that Omicron is a milder variety than prior ones.

Also read: How is US dealing with Omicron’s spread around the holiday season?

“… with the numbers going up, all health systems are going to be under strain,” Soumya Swaminathan said.

According to Swaminathan, the variant is able to evade some immune responses, implying that the booster programmes being implemented in many nations should target persons with weakened immune systems.

“There is now consistent evidence that Omicron is spreading significantly faster than the Delta variant,” Tedros said. “And it is more likely people vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 could be infected or re-infected,” Tedros said.

Also read: Explained: Boosters key to fight omicron, lot still to learn

Their remarks echoed the findings of a study published last week by Imperial College London, which found that the risk of reinfection was more than five times higher than Delta and showed no signs of being milder.

Other types of immunity immunizations, according to WHO officials, may help to avoid infection and disease.

While some acts have weakened antibody defences, there has been hope that T-cells, the second pillar of the immune system, can protect against severe disease by targeting contaminated human cells.

WHO expert Abdi Mahamud added: “Although we are seeing a reduction in the neutralisation antibodies, almost all preliminary analysis shows T-cell mediated immunity remains intact, that is what we really require.”

Also read: US President Joe Biden’s Omicron address will not be about new restrictions: White House

“Of course there is a challenge, many of the monoclonals will not work with Omicron,” Swaminathan said, emphasising how little is known about how to manage the novel variety, which was only discovered last month.

She referred to therapies that resemble natural antibodies in fighting infections, but she didn’t give any specifics. The same has been suggested by some pharmaceutical companies.

Also read: Bharat Biotech confirms open Covaxin vials can be stored for 28 days

However, the WHO team offered some hope to a tired globe facing the current wave, predicting that the pandemic, which has already killed over 5.6 million people globally, would be over by 2022.

It pointed to the creation of second and third-generation vaccines, as well as the advancement of antimicrobial therapies and other breakthroughs.

“(We) hope to consign this disease to a relatively mild disease that is easily prevented, that is easily treated,” Mike Ryan, the WHO’s top emergency expert, told the briefing.

“If we can keep virus transmission to minimum, then we can bring the pandemic to an end.”

Tedros added, however, that China, where the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was first found at the end of 2019, must provide data and information on the virus’s origin in order to improve the response going forward.

“We need to continue until we know the origins, we need to push harder because we should learn from what happened this time in order to (do) better in the future,” Tedros said.