The World Health Organisation (WHO) on November 26, 2021, designated the COVID-19 strain B.1.1.529 as a variant of concern and named it Omicron, on the advice of WHO’s Technical Advisory Group on Virus Evolution (TAG-VE).This variant continues to sweep the world as many countries witnessed the peak in the cases, but the fatalities remain stable compared to the second wave that terribly hit the nation last year from March to June.
India reported over 2,86,000 new COVID-19 cases and 573 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 4,91,700 in the country, the Indian Health Ministry informed on Thursday.
Health experts across the world have informed that the symptoms of the Omicron variant are more or less the same as that of the common flu.
As per the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the four most common symptoms of the variant are cough, fatigue, congestion, and runny nose, but recently, the UK-based Zoe Covid app study informed about the newly added symptoms to the list like nausea and loss of appetite.
When doctors were witnessing the surge in cases they all observed terrible back pain as the most common symptom among the Omicron patients.
In a conversation with IANS earlier this month, General Medicine Consultant of Kochi’s Amrita Hospital, Dr. Ann Mary said, “Compared to Delta, Omicron patients tend to have more back pain and less loss of smell and taste.”
But, now experts are claiming that people who have been infected from Omicron have complained that the back pain lingers even after the recovery.
Noting all this, the WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus highlighted the importance of tracking new variants, like Omicron, in real-time.
The WHO chief pointed out that the coronavirus pandemic is “nowhere near over” and, with the incredible growth of Omicron, new variants are likely to emerge.
According to the global health agency, so far, over 7 million whole genome sequences from 180 nations have been submitted to GISAID, a global mechanism that provides access to genomic data.
The CDC considers and informs people that testing, masks, and vaccines are the tools to fight the omicron variant.
