Covid-19: World Health Organization On Tenterhooks As Delta, Omicron Variants Produce ‘Tsunami Of Cases’ Across The Globe

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By Uganda Online Media

President Yoweri Museveni has appointed Maj Tom Magambo who has been in the Internal Security Organisations(ISO) as the new police Criminal Investigations Director.

“President Museveni has promoted Private Tom Magambo to the rank of Major and appointed him Director Criminal Investigations of the Uganda Police Force,” the acting UPDF spokesperson, Lt Col Ronald Kakurungu said in a statement.

Kampala: The head of the World Health Organization has warned the Omicron and Delta coronavirus variants could produce a “tsunami” of COVID-19 cases that will put “immense pressure” on healthcare systems.

“I’m highly concerned that Omicron, being more transmissible [and] circulating at the same time as Delta, is leading to a tsunami of cases,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at an online news conference on Wednesday.

Two years after the new coronavirus first emerged, top officials with the United Nations health agency have cautioned it was still too early to be reassured by initial data suggesting Omicron, the latest variant to be detected, led to milder disease.

First reported last month in Southern Africa, it is already the dominant variant in the United States and parts of Europe.

As 92 of the WHO’s 194 member countries missed a target to vaccinate 40 percent of their populations by the end of this year, Tedros urged everyone to make a “New Year’s resolution” to get behind a campaign to vaccinate 70 percent of countries’ populations by the beginning of July.

According to WHO’s figures, the number of COVID-19 cases recorded worldwide increased by 11 percent last week compared with the previous week, with nearly 4.99 million newly reported from December 20 to 26.

New cases in Europe – which accounted for more than half of the total – were up 3 percent, while in the Americas it rose by 39 percent and in Africa by 7 percent. The global gain followed a gradual increase since October.

Concerned over the rise in cases, the WHO chief said it would put “immense pressure on exhausted health workers and health systems of [on] the brink of collapse”.

WHO said in its weekly epidemiological report that the “overall risk” related to Omicron “remains very high”.


Tedros repeated his call for countries to share vaccines more equitably and warned that the emphasis on boosters in richer countries could leave poorer nations short of jabs.

He said the WHO was campaigning for every country to hit a target of 70 percent vaccine coverage by the middle of 2022, which would help end the acute phase of the pandemic.


New Year’s Eve will mark the second anniversary of China alerting the WHO to 27 cases of “viral pneumonia” of unknown origin in the city of Wuhan.

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