Omicron has brought back restrictions around the world as Covid cases increase.
The Hague, Netherlands:
The EU’s drug watchdog says the spread of the Omicron variant is pushing Covid towards becoming an endemic disease with which humanity can live, although it remains a pandemic for now. EU drug watchdog said on Tuesday.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) also expressed doubts about giving a fourth vaccine to the general population, arguing that repeated injections are not a “sustainable” strategy.
“No one knows exactly when we will reach the end of the tunnel but we will be there,” Marco Cavaleri, head of vaccine strategy for the Amsterdam-based regulator, told journalists. .
He added: “With an increase in immunity in the population – and with Omicron, there will be a lot of natural immunity going on in addition to vaccination – we will be rapidly moving towards a near-term scenario. than with disease.
But he stressed that “we shouldn’t forget that we are still in a pandemic,” noting the huge burden on health care from the rise of Omicron.
The World Health Organization earlier said on Tuesday that more than half of people in Europe are on track to catch this variation in the next two months.
The WHO also warned that repeated Covid boosters are not a viable strategy, the EU’s drug regulator echoed the remarks.
“If we had a strategy where we deliver boosters every four months, we would potentially have problems with the immune response,” EMA’s Cavaleri said.
“And second, of course there’s a risk of fatigue in the population with constant use of boosters.”
Instead, countries should start thinking about using boosters over longer periods of time, and synchronizing them with the start of the cold season the way flu vaccines are currently being used. , Cavaleri said.
The EMA says separately that studies have confirmed that despite the increased infectivity, the risk of hospitalization from the Omicron variant is one-third to one-half of the risk posed by the Delta strain.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
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