INTERNATIONAL: The World Health Organization’s top Europe official has announced on Tuesday that more than half of the European population are expected to be infected with the Covid-19 Omicron variant within the next six to eight weeks.

WHO’s regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, has announced that a new “West to East tidal wave” of Omicron infections is sweeping across the region on top of Delta infections.

He stated during a news briefing that Europe saw more than 7 million newly reported Covid-19 cases in the first week of 2022, more than doubling over a two-week period.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation forecasts that more than 50 percent of the population in the region will be infected with Omicron in the next 6-8 weeks.

According to WHO’s Europe Director, Hans Kluge, fifty of the 53 countries in Europe and central Asia have now reported cases of Omicron. It is quickly becoming the dominant virus in western Europe and is now spreading into the Balkans.

The WHO classifies the overall risk of Omicron to be “very high,” noting in a recent technical report that it has a “significant growth advantage over Delta, leading to rapid spread in the community.”

The organization has said that the rapid increase in cases will lead to an increase in hospitalizations, may pose overwhelming demands on health care systems and also lead to significant morbidity, particularly in vulnerable populations.

Another WHO official, Catherine Smallwood, warned that Covid-19 is “still a way off” from becoming an endemic. She defined an endemic as the “stable circulation of the virus at predictable levels and potentially known and predictable waves of epidemic transmission.”

She further added that “what we’re seeing at the moment coming into 2022 is nowhere near that,” and “We still have a huge amount of uncertainty. We still have a virus that’s evolving quite quickly and posing new challenges. So, we’re certainly not at the point of being able to call it an endemic.”

^{PHOTO: WHO EUROPE DIRECTOR KLUGE SAYING MORE THAN HALF OF EUROPEAN POPULATION WILL BE INFECTED BY OMICRON IN 6-8 WEEKS, THAT VACCINE IS EFFICIENT AGAINST OMICRON AND CALLING FOR KEEPING SCHOOL OPEN / WHO EXPERT SAYING COVID IS NOT ENDEMIC YET / PEOPLE BEING TESTED FOR COVID IN FRANCE AND BELGIUM / FILE OF EXTERIORS OF MEDICAL CENTRE HOSPITAL IN THE NETHERLANDS / FILE OF PEOPLE GETTING VACCINATED IN GERMANY / FILE OF COVID PATIENT BEING TREATED IN GERMAN HOSPITAL / CHILDREN ENTERING SCHOOL IN PORTUGAL / PEOPLE WALKING ON STREET IN BELGIUM}