More than 50% of Europeans could be infected with Omicron Covid in the next two months, WHO warns 

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More than half of people in Europe are on track to contract the Omicron coronavirus variant in the next two months if infections continue at current rates, the World Health Organisation said Tuesday.

Speaking at a press conference, regional director Hans Kluge warned that the Omicron variant represented a ‘new west-to-east tidal wave sweeping across’ the European region.

‘At this rate, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) forecasts that more than 50 percent of the population in the region will be infected with Omicron in the next six to eight weeks,’ Kluge told reporters.

The WHO’s European region comprises 53 countries and territories including several in Central Asia, and Kluge noted that 50 of them had confirmed cases of the Omicron variant.

According to the WHO, 26 of those countries reported that over one percent of their populations were ‘catching Covid-19 each week,’ as of January 10, and that the region had seen over seven million new virus cases reported in the first week of 2022 alone.

Referencing data collected over the last few weeks, Kluge said the variant was confirmed to be more transmissible and that ‘the mutations it has enable it to adhere to human cells more easily, and it can infect even those who have been previously infected or vaccinated.’

However, Kluge also stressed that ‘approved vaccines do continue to provide good protection against severe disease and death, including for Omicron.’

He cited the hospitalisation rate in Denmark, which he said is six times higher among the unvaccinated than among those who had received their jabs. 

It comes as the number of people in hospital with Covid-19 in France rose by 767 to 22,749 on Monday, the biggest increase since April 2021.

Health Minister Olivier Veran told lawmakers yesterday that the Omicron strain leads to less serious complications than previous variants, but since it is highly infectious, it is pushing hospital numbers up quickly, reported France24.

According to official data released on Monday, France reported close to 94,000 new Covid-19 cases.

This pushed the seven-day moving average of new infections to a new high of 269,614, marking the 14th day in a row in which the value climbed up.

In Spain, Omicron is continuing to help break infection records, with the country reporting 292,394 new Covid cases on Monday. 

The 14-day incidence rate surged to 2,989 cases per 100,000 people as a result, representing an increase of 267 points since Friday.

It means one in every 33 people in the country, or three per cent of the population, has tested positive for coronavirus in the past two weeks alone, reported El Pais. 

The rate of the spread does appear to be slowing down but the figures remain extremely high, with some 790,000 new infections being reported last week. 

Hospital numbers are also climbing in Spain, with 2,070 Covid patients being added over the weekend to Monday, bringing the total number to 16,469 – meaning coronavirus is taking up 24 per cent – almost a quarter – of beds in the country’s intensive care units.   

A further 202 people were confirmed to have lost their lives to Covid in Spain Monday, bringing the death toll to more than 90,000. 

But Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez urged leaders to begin seeing the virus as an endemic illness like the flu on Tuesday – the first major European country to explicitly suggest the classification change. 

‘We have to evaluate the evolution of Covid from pandemic to an endemic illness,’ Sanchez said in a radio interview Monday. 

Meanwhile in Poland, more than 100,000  people have died from Covid, the government said Tuesday, with the mortality rate rising to one of the world’s highest.

‘It’s another sad day but particularly so today because we have crossed the threshold of 100,000 deaths,’ Health Minister Adam Niedzielski told news channel TVN24.

The health ministry said 493 people had died in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 100,254 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

The ministry said there were also more than 18,000 people currently in hospital in the country of 38 million.

According to the latest data, Poland has reported 14.31 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants over the last 14 days – the sixth-highest level in the world after Trinidad and Tobago, Moldova, Georgia, Hungary and San Marino.

Neighbouring Germany is in 26th place with 4.31 deaths.

Around 63 percent of Polish adults are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 – one of the lowest levels in the EU.

The government has encouraged Poles to get vaccinated but has been criticised by the opposition for not taking stronger action by for example introducing requirements for vaccine certificates.

Katarzyna Lubnauer, a deputy from the Civic Platform party on Tuesday accused the government of ‘fatal inaction’.

Lawmaker Malgorzata Kidawa-Blonska, from the same party, said: ‘The cowardice of this government has led to a tragedy.’

The highest total of Covid-related deaths in the EU so far has occurred in Italy with more more than 139,000 fatalities, followed by France, Germany and Poland.

In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz brought in tougher restrictions on Friday – agreed with the country’s 16 states – amid an ongoing surge of Covid and the Omicron strain. 

These included allowing access to restaurants for the fully vaccinated or recovered only – with proof required for both. 

Restrictions in the country have led to protests and anti-lockdown demonstrations, with police officers filmed pepper spraying protestors in Bautzen. 

Rallies were also held in Berlin, Cologne and Leipzig.  

‘It’s a strict rule, but it’s a necessary one that will help us better control infections [in the future] than is currently the case,’ Scholz said, defending the measure. 

But on Sunday, the country’s health minister Karl Lauterbach called for more measures, claiming those announced on Friday did not go far enough. 

It came before Germany recorded 25,255 cases on Monday, around 6,700 more than a week ago, as its seven-day Covid-19 incidence rate per 100,000 inhabitants climbed from 362.7 to 375.7, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases.   

In Britain, meanwhile, Covid cases are falling in every region except the North East, according to official figures released Monday, which add to an ever-growing pile of evidence that the worst of the Omicron outbreak may be over. 

UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) statistics show rates in London — which was the first area to fall victim to the highly-transmissible variant — started to trend downwards before Christmas, which sparked hopes that the rest of the nation would soon follow suit.

Now Government Covid data shows cases are finally on their way down in seven out of England’s eight regions, suggesting the wave may have peaked across much of the country.

Experts are hopeful the Omicron crisis is starting to fizzle out naturally after spiralling to ‘unbelievable’ levels last month.

But there are concerns that the promising trajectory may reverse in the coming days because of schools returning from the Christmas holidays, with infections then spreading back up through the age groups like seen in previous waves.

Despite the confusion over exactly where the country finds itself on the epidemic curve, ministers are facing calls to announce how they intend to live with the virus following almost two years of a never-ending cycle of crippling restrictions.

Deaths have barely risen in England’s most recent wave, and are currently tracking at about half the level of a bad flu year, analysis suggests. The number of critically ill patients in hospital is still flat, despite Omicron first starting to spiral out of control a month ago.

It emerged Monday that No10’s Plan B curbs could start to be lifted this month, with some ministers pushing for the work from home guidance to go first. 

The Prime Minister has also asked the UKHSA to look again at whether the self-isolation period could be relaxed from seven days to five to ease crippling staff shortages in the economy and public services. In an extraordinary twist, the agency yesterday admitted that it had issued misleading claims about the way Britain’s rules compare to other countries.