By Fed­er­i­ca Mar­si, AL JAZEERA

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion is dis­cussing pan­dem­ic pre­pared­ness and re­sponse in a three-day spe­cial ses­sion, as con­cerns grow.

A three-day spe­cial ses­sion of the World Health As­sem­bly (WHA) kicked off on Mon­day to dis­cuss pan­dem­ic pre­pared­ness and re­sponse, amid con­cerns over the spread of the new Omi­cron vari­ant.

The WHA nor­mal­ly meets each May but a spe­cial ses­sion was called for in a de­ci­sion adopt­ed by the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) mem­ber states. The spe­cial ses­sion was the sec­ond in the his­to­ry of the WHO, which was found­ed in 1948.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of WHO’s 194 mem­ber states will hold talks on new in­ter­na­tion­al rules for han­dling fu­ture out­breaks.

A draft res­o­lu­tion cur­rent­ly un­der re­view stops short of call­ing for the es­tab­lish­ment of a “pan­dem­ic treaty” or a “legal­ly bind­ing in­stru­ment”, which pro­po­nents say would beef up the in­ter­na­tion­al re­sponse when a pan­dem­ic erupts.

The WHO has warned against coun­tries hasti­ly im­pos­ing trav­el curbs. How­ev­er, bans have been in­tro­duced in re­cent days, with the UK, EU, and the US among those to im­pose re­stric­tions on ar­rivals from most­ly South­ern African na­tions.

WHO chief says eq­ui­table vac­cine dis­tri­b­u­tion key to end­ing pan­dem­ic

The chief of the WHO says the spread of Omi­cron is a “test of our col­lec­tive abil­i­ty to re­spond to fu­ture pan­demics”.

Ad­dress­ing the WHA open­ing ses­sion, Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus said “coura­geous and com­pas­sion­ate lead­er­ship” and an “un­shake­able com­mit­ment to sol­i­dar­i­ty” will be fun­da­men­tal in end­ing the pan­dem­ic.

Tedros crit­i­cised the in­equitable dis­tri­b­u­tion of vac­cines, adding that ac­cess to for all coun­tries was nec­es­sary to lim­it the spread of the virus and its mu­ta­tions.

South Africa prepar­ing health fa­cil­i­ties to cope with Omi­cron

South Africa’s Health Min­is­ter Joe Phaahla says the gov­ern­ment is do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to pre­pare health fa­cil­i­ties to cope with Omi­cron and sci­en­tists are work­ing to es­tab­lish whether it is more trans­mis­si­ble and whether vac­cines can pro­tect against se­vere ill­ness.

Phaahla al­so said, at the news con­fer­ence on Mon­day, of­fi­cials are en­gag­ing with coun­tries that im­posed trav­el re­stric­tions on South­ern African coun­tries to try to get them to re­verse them.

South African epi­demi­ol­o­gist Ab­dool Karim al­so said on Mon­day that not enough da­ta had been col­lect­ed to de­ter­mine the clin­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions of Omi­cron com­pared to pre­vi­ous vari­ants, and that re-in­fec­tions are like­ly but that vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple had less prob­a­bil­i­ty of de­vel­op­ing se­ri­ous symp­toms.

WHO says Omi­cron pos­es ‘very high’ glob­al risk, coun­tries must pre­pare

The WHO says “the over­all glob­al risk re­lat­ed to… Omi­cron is… very high” and that it is like­ly to spread in­ter­na­tion­al­ly with “se­vere con­se­quences” in some ar­eas.

In tech­ni­cal ad­vice to its 194 mem­ber states, the UN health agency on Mon­day urged them to ac­cel­er­ate the vac­ci­na­tion of high-pri­or­i­ty groups and to “en­sure mit­i­ga­tion plans are in place” to main­tain es­sen­tial health ser­vices.

Fur­ther re­search is need­ed to bet­ter un­der­stand Omi­cron’s po­ten­tial to evade the im­mu­ni­ty in­duced by vac­cines and pre­vi­ous in­fec­tions. More da­ta is ex­pect­ed in the com­ing weeks.

Dr An­gelique Co­et­zee: Omi­cron caus­ing “very mild symp­toms” in peo­ple who are vac­ci­nat­ed

Dr An­gelique Co­et­zee, who first spot­ted the new COVID-19 vari­ant in South Africa, says that so far, peo­ple in­fect­ed with Omi­cron have “very mild symp­toms”, es­pe­cial­ly those who were in­oc­u­lat­ed af­ter Au­gust.

Co­et­zee, of the South African Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion, said Omi­cron had raised con­cerns due to its more than 30 mu­ta­tions, which might hin­der vac­cine ef­fec­tive­ness.

While it might take weeks for sci­en­tists to un­der­stand the im­pli­ca­tions of the new vari­ant, hos­pi­tal ad­mis­sions in South Africa re­main low, rais­ing hopes that the new vari­ant will not lead to in­creased hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion rates.

Speak­ing to Al Jazeera’s Fah­mi­da Miller, Co­et­zee said the trav­el bans im­posed on South Africa were “ex­treme­ly pre­ma­ture.”