World Health Organization's Covid-19 technical lead Maria Van Kerkhove has said that initial reports suggest that people with Omicron tend to have more mild disease.

"Our data that we have on severity of Omicron is coming in by the day. We do know that people who are infected with Omicron variant can have mild disease all the way through severe disease. Initial reports suggest that people with Omicron tend to have more mild disease, but it's too early to tell," Van Kerkhove said in an interview with CBS News.

"And the reason for that is because it takes time for people to go through the full course of their infection. It may take some weeks before we actually understand how many of those individuals will go on to develop severe disease. So, we do see that full spectrum. But even if it is a mild disease, it's important that we still act fast now to take measures to control its spread. Because even if we have a large number of cases that are mild, some of those individuals will need hospitalizations. They will need to be- go into ICU and some people will die. And so more cases can mean more hospitalizations. More hospitalizations could mean more deaths, and we don't want to see that happen on top of an already difficult situation with Delta circulating globally."

The expert said the WHO wants governments to act now to take measures to increase vaccination coverage among those who are most at risk in all countries, as well as take measures to drive down transmission