By JAMEY KEAT­EN, As­so­ci­at­ed Press

GENE­VA (AP) — The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion on Mon­day is push­ing for an in­ter­na­tion­al ac­cord to help pre­vent and fight fu­ture pan­demics amid the emer­gence of a wor­ry­ing new omi­cron COVID-19 vari­ant.

WHO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus al­so said many un­cer­tain­ties re­main about just how trans­mis­si­ble and se­vere in­fec­tion by the high­ly mu­tat­ed omi­cron might be.

Tedros joined lead­ers like out­go­ing Ger­man Chan­cel­lor An­gela Merkel and Chilean Pres­i­dent Se­bas­t­ian Pin­era for a long-planned and large­ly vir­tu­al spe­cial ses­sion of the U.N. health agency’s mem­ber states at the World Health As­sem­bly.

The gath­er­ing is aimed at de­vis­ing a glob­al ac­tion plan to­ward pre­vent­ing, prepar­ing and re­spond­ing to fu­ture pan­demics.

“The emer­gence of the high­ly mu­tat­ed omi­cron vari­ant un­der­lines just how per­ilous and pre­car­i­ous our sit­u­a­tion is,” Tedros said, call­ing for a “legal­ly bind­ing” agree­ment that wasn’t men­tioned in a draft text seek­ing con­sen­sus on the way for­ward. “In­deed, omi­cron demon­strates just why the world needs a new ac­cord on pan­demics.”

“Our cur­rent sys­tem dis­in­cen­tivizes coun­tries from alert­ing oth­ers to threats that will in­evitably land on their shores,” he said, say­ing that South Africa and Botswana — where the new vari­ant was de­tect­ed in south­ern Africa — should be praised and not “pe­nal­ized” for their work. That was an al­lu­sion to trav­el re­stric­tions an­nounced by many coun­tries on air trav­el to and from the re­gion.

Tedros said WHO sci­en­tists and oth­ers around the world were work­ing ur­gent­ly to de­ci­pher the threat post by the new vari­ant, say­ing: “We don’t yet know whether omi­cron is as­so­ci­at­ed with more trans­mis­sion, more se­vere dis­ease, more risk of in­fec­tions, or more risk of evad­ing vac­cines.”

The world should now be “wide awake” to the threat of the coro­n­avirus, “but omi­cron’s very emer­gence is an­oth­er re­minder that al­though many of us might think we are done with COVID-19. It’s not done with us,” he added.

A draft res­o­lu­tion set to be adopt­ed by the World Health As­sem­bly stops short of call­ing for work to­ward specif­i­cal­ly es­tab­lish­ing a “pan­dem­ic treaty” or “legal­ly bind­ing in­stru­ment” sought by some, which could beef up the in­ter­na­tion­al re­sponse when — not if — a new pan­dem­ic erupts.

Eu­ro­pean Union mem­ber coun­tries and oth­ers had sought lan­guage call­ing for work to­ward a treaty, but the Unit­ed States and a few oth­er coun­tries coun­tered that the sub­stance of any ac­cord should be worked out first be­fore any such doc­u­ment is giv­en a name. A “treaty” would sug­gest a legal­ly bind­ing agree­ment that could re­quire rat­i­fi­ca­tion — and would like­ly in­cur do­mes­tic po­lit­i­cal hag­gling in some coun­tries.

Out­go­ing Ger­man Chan­cel­lor An­gela Merkel, whose 16-year tenure is like­ly to end next week, called for “re­li­able fi­nanc­ing” for WHO and in­creased con­tri­bu­tions to the U.N. agency from its mem­ber states — while al­lud­ing to the EU po­si­tion in fa­vor of a bind­ing agree­ment.

“The cat­a­stroph­ic im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in terms of health and the econ­o­my ought to be a les­son to us,” she said by video mes­sage. “Virus­es know no na­tion­al bor­ders. That’s pre­cise­ly why we should lay down mea­sures to be tak­en to im­prove pre­ven­tion, ear­ly de­tec­tion, and re­sponse in in­ter­na­tion­al­ly bind­ing fash­ion.”

Britain’s am­bas­sador in Gene­va, Si­mon Man­ley, tweet­ed a copy of the draft text that was agreed by con­sen­sus — as re­quired un­der WHO rules on such is­sues — and praised Chile and Aus­tralia for their work as co-chairs.

The #Omi­cron vari­ant shows yet again why we need a com­mon un­der­stand­ing of how we pre­pare for and re­spond to pan­demics, so we’re all play­ing by the same rules,” he wrote.

The draft makes no ref­er­ence to the word “treaty” but, among oth­er things, calls for the cre­ation of an “in­ter­gov­ern­men­tal ne­go­ti­at­ing body” among WHO mem­ber states to work out a pos­si­ble deal to im­prove pan­dem­ic pre­ven­tion, pre­pared­ness and re­sponse.

The three-day meet­ing that opened Mon­day amounts to a long-term ap­proach: Any U.N.-backed agree­ment is like­ly to take many months, if not years, to be con­clud­ed and come in­to ef­fect.

But it comes as many coun­tries have been scram­bling to ad­dress the emer­gence of omi­cron that has led to trav­el bans across the world and sent tremors through stock mar­kets on Fri­day.