The World Health Organization warned against treating the omicron Covid variant as a mild strain because it will cause severe illness.
Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's Covid-19 technical lead, told the public during a question and answer session that people with omicron can have a full spectrum of disease.
The WHO warned on Tuesday that omicron is spreading faster than any previous variant. Increased transmission will result in increased hospitalizations that will cause health-care systems to fail.
People will die if the system is overburdened. There isn't a narrative out there that it's just a mild disease.
The elderly, people who have underlying health conditions and the unvaccinated are still at risk of severe disease.
The omicron variant is doubling every two days or less in the United Kingdom, according to Dr. Mike Ryan, director of WHO's health emergencies program.
If you have 100,000 cases today, it is 200,000 in two days, but then 400,000 in two days, and then 800,000 in two days. The actual number of cases can increase eight or 10 fold over the course of a week.
People need to wash their hands, wear masks, and maintain a distance from people.
We need to act now. It is time to act. She said that there is no time to wait until we start to see more hospitalizations. As holidays are coming up, people need to reexamine what they do and make the best decisions for their families.
More than 78,000 new Covid infections were reported in the U.K. in the last 24 hours. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has warned of a wave of infections.
