WHO head Gebreyesus urged to postpone New Year's holidays to protect against omicron strain
Photo: Denis Balibouse / Reuters
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adanom Ghebreyesus has called on people to cancel their New Year and Christmas plans to guard against the spread of the omicron strain of the coronavirus. Bloomberg Quicktake quoted his words from a briefing at the organization's headquarters in Geneva.
The head of WHO called for the postponement of massive New Year's events, calling it a difficult but necessary decision. “It's better to cancel the holiday than to lose your life. We all want to spend time with friends and family. We all want to return to normal life, ”said Gebreyesus.
At the briefing, the head of WHO said that, according to his forecasts, the COVID-19 pandemic will end in 2022. This will only be possible if 70 percent of the world's population is vaccinated by the middle of next year.
Earlier, the WHO representative in Russia Melita Vujnovich suggested that the omicron could become a “live vaccine” and help defeat the COVID-19 pandemic. She noted that such an outcome is possible, but stressed that at the moment it is too early to talk about the transition of the coronavirus to the status of an endemic disease, since there are not enough patients with omicron.
