WHO Calls for Balanced Reaction to New Virus Variant

The World Health Organization (WHO) has called for a balanced global reaction to the omicron variant of the coronavirus, saying countries that report cases of the new strain should not be penalized, as the South African scientists behind its discovery prepare to send samples for laboratories around the world.

The discovery of a highly mutated new coronavirus variant in Botswana earlier this month has alarmed world health officials, as it appears to be the cause of an increase in cases in South Africa. preliminary studies that suggest it is able to reinfect patients and avoid vaccines. It is not yet known whether it worsens symptoms.

Several countries have imposed severe travel restrictions on southern Africa. Switzerland has also restricted travel originating in Israel, Hong Kong and Belgium, where two cases of the variant have been confirmed.

Stocks fell on Friday (26) as investors debated the possibility that much of the progress made in the recovery from the pandemic could be lost.

“Some countries are reporting this information and we don’t want them to be further stigmatized,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s chief technical officer for Covid-19, told the Financial Times. “There needs to be a balance in the answer.”

Asked whether travel bans are justified, Van Kerkhove said countries should increase surveillance for this variant and others, increase testing capacity and do “intelligent sequencing” that is “more geographically representative, covering more countries, and test strategically , not just in quantity, but in strategic locations”.

“We need people to take a measured approach to risk,” she said. “The delta is still circling the world and killing people all over the world. Let’s not forget how many people are infected with the delta.”

Van Kerkhove said that if global access to vaccines had been more equitable “we would be in a very different epidemiological and economic situation across the world. We would have the poor and vulnerable protected, fewer deaths.”

WHO on Friday took the unusual step of saying that the omicron variant causes “concern”, skipping the middle step of “interest”. The measure has limited practical implications, but it serves as a signal to the world that the issue is serious.

Scientists in the WHO technical advisory group on vaccine evolution had discussed whether to designate it as a “variant of interest” first, but decided to give it the highest designation after agreeing that slow responses at earlier key moments of the pandemic were disastrous, according to people familiar with the discussion.

Tulio de Oliveira, one of the scientists behind the omicron discovery and head of South Africa’s Center for Epidemic Response and Innovation, said the country has been “penalized with vaccine isolation, travel bans and discrimination since the discovery of the beta variant, and now from the omicron”.

“If this continues, we run the risk that many countries will stop reporting new variants and the world will risk going back to the initial stage of the pandemic,” he told the FT.

Oliveira said he has received requests from the US National Institutes of Health, the Coalition for Innovations and Preparedness for Epidemics, the UK Health Safety Agency and Porton Down Laboratories to share virus samples.

“We’ll do what we did with beta — that is, send virus samples to the world’s leading biosecurity agencies.”

“We’ve always been very collaborative with all the major security agencies in the world so that key questions can be answered as quickly as possible,” he said. “We don’t send samples to private companies, but we work through our government with other government biosafety organizations around the world.”

Van Kerkhove explained that the micron appears to exhibit a so-called “growth advantage” because the measure used to detect it — the lack of a gene in PCR tests — is increasingly present in cases that arise. a total estimate of detected cases.

The scientist said that it is not known where the variant originated, but that one of the hypotheses under consideration suggests that it may have come from an immunocompromised infected patient who had not been able to completely rid himself of the virus and in whom the virus had replicated over a period of significant time.

Van Kerkhove noted that the WHO does not want people to panic, and that “there are already sharing agreements by which the virus can be shared, so scientists can collaborate in real time” to study the effect of vaccines and immune reactions . Results are expected for at least three to four weeks, she said.

Van Kerkhove said this “could be” a December 2019/January 2020 moment, when the world first learned of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China.

“South Africa introduced it [à OMS] this week. We act quickly,” she said. “No regrets.”

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves