The World Health Organization (WHO) has revealed that the risk from the Omicron variant is still "very high".

According to a report by AFP, the variant has caused rapid spikes in many countries.

Significant spike in cases

Covid-19 cases have increased by 11 percent globally last week or five million new cases and over 44,000 new deaths.

"Consistent evidence shows that the Omicron variant has a growth advantage over the Delta variant with a doubling time of two to three days and rapid increases in the incidence of cases is seen in a number of countries including Britain and the United States, where it has become the dominant variant.

"The rapid growth rate is likely to be a combination of both immune evasion and intrinsic increased transmissibility of the Omicron variant,” said WHO in its Covid-19 weekly epidemiological update, as quoted in the report.

On the bright side, the agency said that there’s a 29 per cent decrease in cases observed in South Africa where the variant was first reported.

It also noted that early data from Britain, South Africa and Denmark, which currently has the world's highest rate of infection per person, suggested there was a reduced risk of hospitalisation for Omicron compared to Delta.

Despite that, there is still a need for further data to understand Omicron's severity in many factors including clinical markers.