Amid rising cases of the new Omicron variant of the coronavirus, World Health Organization (WHO) Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan on Monday called for the expansion and strengthening of COVID-19 vaccination across the world. She said this through a virtual medium in the plenary session of PANEX-21 held at Armed Forces Medical College in Pune, Maharashtra.
Dr. Swaminathan said that there is a need to increase immunization further to ensure that even the marginalized are protected against this pandemic. Due to this, the number of deaths due to corona and the figures of hospitalization of patients suffering from corona will also reduce. She said that we need to expand the vaccination campaign all over the world as much as possible so as to control the spread of the coronavirus and now a new variant Omicron of the corona is also increasing.
Omicron can infect despite vaccination
“In the case of the delta variant, there has been a slight decline in the efficacy of the routine vaccines against the virus, but in the case of Omicron, it is being recorded,” she said. This means that even after vaccination, the Omicron variant can trick our immune system and infect us. But through vaccination, the severity of the disease can be reduced to a great extent.
Negotiations are being held regarding the global pandemic treaty
During this, she also told that discussions are being held at the global level regarding the ‘Global Pandemic Treaty’. Dr. Swaminathan said that this treaty binds all countries together on the use of arms and ammunition, automatic treaties, and biological weapons to deal with other crises like Corona, whose use is not allowed for global reasons.
She also told that in the early stages of the corona pandemic, the WHO had started work on finding a cure for it. Clinical trials were conducted in China and Italy in some countries. Where the death rate was very high during the first wave. We started trials in 30 countries within a few weeks. India was also a very important part of these trials and has played a significant role in this.