Omicron strain of coronavirus that causes COVID now in at least a dozen

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a special session of the World Health Assembly that the emergence of the new variant “underlines just how perilous and precarious our situation is.”

The session has been called to allow WHO member states to create a plan to tackle the next pandemic and avoid some of the shortcomings that have hampered the response to the current one.

“Indeed, Omicron demonstrates just why the world needs a new accord on pandemics: our current system disincentivizes countries from alerting others to threats that will inevitably land on their shores,” said Tedros.

Separately, G-7 health ministers are meeting Monday to discuss measures to tackle omicron.

Already, a swath of countries have announced bans or restrictions on travel from South Africa and neighboring countries, including the U.S., the U.K., Japan, Australia, Poland, Norway and the EU.

Omicron has been detected in at least a dozen countries, including Canada, meaning it has reached North America. The other countries include France, the U.K., Germany, Portugal, Denmark, Israel, Hong Kong, Australia and South Africa. For now, it’s not clear whether it will prove resistant to the current vaccines. Moderna
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said over the weekend that it would know “in the next couple of weeks” whether the current vaccine can provide protection against omicron, and that it could have a new omicron vaccine ready by early 2022, if needed.

Don’t miss: Here’s what we know about COVID omicron variant — and what we don’t know yet

Related: More omicron cases pop up as world scrambles to learn more about latest COVID strain

Dr. Anthony Facui, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Joe Biden’s chief medical officer, urged Americans to take the variant seriously, but said there’s no reason to panic.

“We just really need to, as I’ve said so often, prepare for the worst,” Fauci told ABC News’ “This Week.” “It may not be that we’re going to have to go the route that people are saying. We don’t know a lot about this virus. So, we want to prepare as best we can, but it may turn out that this preparation, although important, may not necessarily push us to the next level.”

Fauci said getting vaccinated and getting boosters are still the best defense.

“I don’t think there’s any possibility that this could completely evade any protection by vaccine. It may diminish it a bit, but that’s the reason why you boost,” he told ABC News. “If ever there was a reason for the people who were vaccinated to get boosted, and for those who were unvaccinated to get vaccinated, it’s now,” Fauci said in a separate interview with NBC News.

On Monday, Biden echoed…