
‘Highly unlikely’ existing vaccines will fail against Omicron: WHO
The Hindu
In the fight against all COVID-19 variants, WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said, “the best weapon we have right now is to get vaccinated.”
Omicron does not appear to cause more severe disease than previous COVID-19 variants, and is “highly unlikely” to fully dodge vaccine protections, a top WHO official said.
The World Health Organization’s second-in-command, said that while a lot remained to be learned about the new, heavily mutated variant of COVID-19, preliminary data indicated it did not make people sicker than Delta and other strains.
“The preliminary data doesn’t indicate that this is more severe. In fact, if anything, the direction is towards less severity,” WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said in an interview, insisting though that more research was needed.

Indian Forest Service (IFoS) officer R. Gokul, who was suspended by the State government in connection with a case filed in the Supreme Court seeking permission to denotify 443 acres of HMT forest land, besides writing a letter to the CBI, has reportedly admitted to his mistake and submitted an unconditional apology.