WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan urges people not to panic over Omicron2Photo© news18.com

WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan urges people not to panic over Omicron

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The World Health Organization's (WHO) chief scientist on Friday, November 3, 2021, urged people not to panic over the emergence of the Omicron coronavirus variant and said it wastoo early to say if COVID-19 vaccines would have to be modified to fight it.

Speaking in an interview, Soumya Swaminathan also said it was impossible to predict if Omicron would become the dominant strain.

Omicron has gained a foothold in Asia, Africa, the Americas, the Middle East and Europe and has reached seven of the nine provinces of South Africa, where it was first identified. Many governments have tightened travel rules to keep the variant out.