On Thursday, December 23 at 19:30 GMT:
The COVID-19 pandemic has continued unabated all through 2021, with coronavirus now estimated to have contaminated greater than 276 million folks worldwide. Greater than 5.3 million folks have died.
The attain of vaccination campaigns in developed international locations promoted cautious optimism amongst some public well being officers that 2022 would the 12 months that the pandemic would start to recede, after waves of Delta infections around the globe.
However then got here Omicron. The extremely mutated SARS-Co-V-2 variant has taken speedy maintain in practically each nook of the world since South Africa reported it to the World Well being Group on November 24.
Now international locations throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas are reimposing management measures in an effort to purchase their already overwhelmed healthcare methods a while to adapt to the world’s latest variant of concern.
But international well being inequalities might deepen. Whereas highly-vaccinated populations in wealthy international locations might be able to stand up to the worst of Omicron, growing nations which have had little entry to efficient vaccines might proceed to face additional peril.
On this episode of The Stream, we’ll take a look at what might lie forward for the world as coronavirus continues its march into 2022.
On this episode of The Stream, we’re joined by:
Dr Ahmed Twaij, @twaiji
Physician and journalist
ahmedtwaij.com/
Anant Bhan, @AnantBhan
Bioethicist and medical researcher
Dr Margaret Harris, @WHO
Spokesperson, World Well being Group
who.int