Omicron accounts for 90% of daily COVID cases in Kingdom

AMMAN — The Omicron variant accounts for 90% of daily COVID-19 cases, which is the dominant variant in the fourth wave of the pandemic the Kingdom is currently facing, Adel Bilbeisi, Prime Ministry adviser for epidemiological affairs and the official in charge of the COVID-19 crisis, said on Thursday.

Bilbeisi told the Jordan News Agency, Petra, that a total of 116,000 cases have been registered in the current epidemiological week that ends on Friday, noting that Omicron accounts for 1 per cent of hospital admissions.

He pointed out that the illness severity of Omicron is less than other variants that account for 5 per cent of hospitalisations, warning of low levels of applying preventive procedures in light of the spread of Omicron in a bid to reduce hospitalisation rate that exceed a daily rate of 200 cases.

The advisor said that the fourth wave is witnessing lower deaths when compared with the previous waves.

He expected the wave to reach peak next week, hoping that estimations turn out to be wrong and for next week to witness lower cases and stable epidemiological curves.

On the national vaccination programme against the pandemic, Bilbeisi said that the percentage of the targeted categories of people over the age of 18 for the first dose stands at 72 per cent and third dose at 66 per cent, noting that 465,000 people have received the third dose, which is relatively low.

The number of people vaccinated of the 12-17 age group has reached 194,000, including 14,000 students in the school vaccination campaign that was launched on January 23.

As for living with the disease, he said that scientists say that the pandemic will most probably end, yet the virus will join a series of endemic diseases, noting that the seasonal flu has never ended and its virus now is classified as an endemic virus.

As for the time needed for the results of PCR tests, he said that the results of the majority of tests are out within 24 hours, attributing the delay of some results to the high number of daily tests, which sometimes reaches 75,000 tests.