tolerable situation, right. we could prepare for it, we could model it. what we don t know yet is what the degree of severe illness will be with this variant, and we still have so many places that don t even have primary vaccination coverage above 50%, let alone booster coverage or third-shot coverage above 50%. so that puts us in a very vulnerable position. the other thing is that this virus mutates incredibly well and incredibly fast. so i would like to say it s going to mutate towards this less severe variant, but i really don t think anybody s comfortable predicting that yet. so we are in a very tenuous place where we re still waiting for a lot of data to come in, but we ve got to prepare to the extent we can for what might be another really bad wave. is this comes down to protocols and guidelines. in kind of this difficult spot. you re shutting down classrooms. you re shutting down broadway
believe that rich countries like the united states are hoarding supply? well, really, what we need to look at is whether there s sufficient supply going to countries that have not yet even reached 10% vaccination coverage. those doses are flowing now, and there has been, you know, great generosity of countries to donate doses, along with the doses that have been purchased through the covax facility, so we re certainly in a situation now that s very different than it was even eight weeks ago. and that s a good news story. the other point that i think we should focus on, however, is that given that the focus continues to be on protecting people from the severe end of the disease spectrum, the evidence on booster doses for just how much they re really needed for protecting against hospitalization, death, and severe disease, the data really show that there is some minor to modest reduction in the performance of those vaccines. we really have to focus on
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vaccination coverage, a continuing to promote public health and social measures like mask wearing and social distancing, ensuring strong health care capacity, strengthening active surveillance, and taking a risk-based approach to border control. although there s still a lot we don t know, we do know this variant seems to be more transmissible, isa. and as a result many governments across the region are tightening entry requirements and quarantine rules while others have outright banned the entry of travelers from certain countries. yes, so lots of unanswered questions. we are waiting for that data. we might be another two or three weeks. let me get to cyril vanier in paris. good morning to you, cyril. i ve seen in the last few minutes france reported its ninth omicron case, but there seems to be no alarm so far. reporter: well, i think partly because this was inevitable, isa. over the last few days french authorities said they had a number of suspected omicron cases but they were w