By TED RE­GEN­CIA & DAVID CHILD | AL JAZEERA

● In­fec­tion rates are surg­ing in many parts of the world, fu­elled by the spread of the high­ly-in­fec­tious Omi­cron vari­ant ●

(AL JAZEERA) — The risk posed by the Omi­cron vari­ant is still “very high”, the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) said on Wednes­day, af­ter COVID-19 case num­bers shot up by 11 per­cent glob­al­ly last week.

Omi­cron is be­hind the rapid virus spikes, the WHO said in its COVID week­ly epi­demi­o­log­i­cal up­date, hav­ing over­tak­en the pre­vi­ous­ly dom­i­nant Delta vari­ant in sev­er­al na­tions, in­clud­ing the Unit­ed King­dom and the Unit­ed States.

The up­date came af­ter a num­ber of coun­tries re­port­ed record high in­fec­tion fig­ures in re­cent days.

“The rapid cir­cu­la­tion of the Delta and Omi­cron vari­ants of COVID-19 world­wide is cre­at­ing a “tsuna­mi of cas­es”, WHO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus says.

Ad­dress­ing re­porters at a news brief­ing, Tedros al­so re­peat­ed his call for coun­tries to share vac­cines more eq­ui­tably and warned that the em­pha­sis on de­liv­er­ing boost­er jabs in rich­er coun­tries could leave poor­er na­tions short of shots.

He said hit­ting a 70 per­cent glob­al vac­ci­na­tion tar­get could help bring about an end to the acute phase of the pan­dem­ic.