NNA - The EU medicines watchdog said Thursday the Omicron variant of Covid-19 may cause milder disease, as the World Health Organization warned against a re-run of vaccine hoarding by rich nations as the new strain spreads.

The tentative judgement from the European Medicines Agency comes after the WHO said this week there was some evidence that Omicron causes less severe disease than Delta, the currently dominant variant.

"Cases appear to be mostly mild, however we need to gather more evidence to determine whether the spectrum of disease severity caused by Omicron is different (to) that of all the variants that have been circulating so far," said Marco Cavaleri, EMA's head of biological health threats and vaccines strategy. --AFP

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