An employee at a testing station takes a sample from a woman. Many areas in Lower Saxony have stricter Corona rules.
The World Health Organization said that the highly smilng variant of Covid-19 could change the course of the epidemic.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General, said at a media briefing that it was still difficult to know the exact impact.
Tedros said that certain features of omicron, including its global spread and large number of mutations, suggest it could have a major impact on the course of the Pandemic.
According to the WHO, genetic changes to the virus affect its virulence and could make it more infectious than previous strains.
Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's technical lead on Covid-19, said preliminary evidence from South Africa may suggest that omicron is milder than the delta strain, but it is too early to conclude that.
It is too early to tell, Van Kerkhove said during the briefing. I wanted to be cautious about the severity of omicron.
She noted that vulnerable patients who are older, unvaccinated or have underlying conditions have a higher risk of developing severe disease.
The WHO said that the omicron variant has been found in 57 countries across the word.
Over the last week, new cases have been reported worldwide. There were more than 4 million new confirmed cases in the week that ended on August 18.
Over the last week, deaths worldwide increased by 10%, according to the WHO report. There were over 52,500 deaths reported.
Scientists in South Africa released a small study about the effect omicron has on vaccine effectiveness.
It found that the variant reduces the effectiveness of Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine. The people who got a booster shot after recovering from the virus will likely have better protection against disease.
The reduction neutralizing activity would result in a significant reduction in vaccine efficacy, but it is still premature to conclude that, according to the WHO Chief Scientist.
The immune system is more complex than we know. There are T cells, there are memory B cells, and so what we need now is a coordinated research effort and not jumping to conclusions.
Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, said the company can develop a vaccine that targets the new variant by March 2022. It will take a few weeks to determine if current vaccines give enough protection against omicron.
The White House's chief medical advisor told reporters Tuesday that scientists should have data about vaccine efficacy by the middle of next week.
Fauci said that they would be able to determine whether or not the effectiveness of the vaccine is affected by the live virus or pseudo virus. We are doing animal studies to evaluate immune protection as well as efficacy of antivirals.
The European Union's public health agency says that Omicron has been found in 21 countries.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention estimated that the variant could become the dominant strain in Europe between January and March if it spreads quickly.
If 1% of current Covid cases in Europe are due to the new variant, and it's spreading more than twice as fast in the EU as it is in South Africa, it could potentially become dominant there by January 1 with more than 50% of all new infections.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention said in a statement that the time it takes for the majority of the infections to be caused by the Omicron VOC is shorter if the growth advantage is greater.
The estimates are based on several assumptions. Results will be dependent on many still unknown factors, such as vaccine immunity escape and natural immunity escape.
The analysis was cited in the report.
