By FED­ER­I­CA MAR­SI | AL JAZEERA

■ Sev­er­al coun­tries see record high COVID-19 cas­es as the more in­fec­tious Omi­cron vari­ant spreads ■

(AL JAZEERA) — More ev­i­dence is emerg­ing that the Omi­cron coro­n­avirus vari­ant is caus­ing milder symp­toms than pre­vi­ous strains, the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion has said.

The World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion’s In­ci­dent Man­ag­er, Ab­di Ma­hamud, told a press con­fer­ence more ev­i­dence is emerg­ing that the Omi­cron coro­n­avirus vari­ant is af­fect­ing the up­per res­pi­ra­to­ry tract, caus­ing milder symp­toms than pre­vi­ous strains.

How­ev­er, he added that Omi­cron’s high trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty means it will be­come dom­i­nant with­in weeks in many places, pos­ing a threat in coun­tries where a high por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion re­mains un­vac­ci­nat­ed.

Asked by me­dia rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Gene­va about whether an Omi­cron-spe­cif­ic vac­cine was need­ed, Ma­hamud said it was too ear­ly to say but stressed that the de­ci­sion re­quired glob­al co­or­di­na­tion and should not be left to the com­mer­cial sec­tor.

Near­ly 300 mil­lion peo­ple have test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 world­wide dur­ing the past two years, and more than five mil­lion deaths have been re­port­ed.