The world is less than two weeks away from the start of 2022, and there are still no signs that the COVID pandemic is over. If we take a look at France, for instance, the situation indeed looks awful. As worldometers.info reveals, France is reporting tens of thousands of infections with the coronavirus every day. For instance, the European country reported over 58,000 infections yesterday, December 17.
France even imposed strict travel restrictions against those who come from the UK. According to the BBC, French Prime Minister Jean Castex considers that the new Omicron variant of COVID is spreading across Europe “at lightning speed”.
Omicron will become dominant in France in early 2022
Jean Castex also has a grim prediction regarding the spread of the new Omicron variant in his country. He believes that the strain first discovered in South Africa will become dominant in France at the beginning of 2022.
Omicron is already thriving in Europe, where it’s causing tens of thousands of infections. Several nations had already imposed new travel restrictions.
As expected, authorities continue to add a lot of faith in the COVID vaccines, and the French Prime Minister is one of them. He declared, as quoted by NDTV:
While we have given time, a lot of time for those French people who were hesitant and had doubts, in January we will strengthen the incentive for vaccination, because it is not acceptable that the refusal of a few million French people to be vaccinated, puts the life of an entire country at risk.
Here’s something interesting that the World Health Organization has to say about Omicron:
It is not yet clear whether infection with Omicron causes more severe disease compared to infections with other variants, including Delta. Preliminary data suggests that there are increasing rates of hospitalization in South Africa, but this may be due to increasing overall numbers of people becoming infected, rather than a result of specific infection with Omicron.
