NIH Director Calls for Greater Alarm Over Omicron, Discounts ‘Premature Declaration of Mildness’ in Early Reports

National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins said Tuesday he believed it was “premature” to downplay a new variant of Covid-19.

He made the comment in an interview with Fox News’ Bill Hemmer, who noted early reporting indicated that Covid-19 cases caused by the Omicron variant were mild.

“I’ve been on Zoom calls with the leaders of the South African public health system,” Collins said. “They are worried that may have been a premature declaration of mildness of the illness, because most of the early cases were in college students who tend not to get very sick anyway. Let’s hold off on that before concluding that this is not a virus that can cause people to get sick enough to be in the hospital. We’ll know more in a week or so, but I would be hesitant to declare those early statements as the answer just yet.”

Collins’ remarks followed dueling statements issued by the World Health Organization on Monday. An assessment early in the day warned the variant posed a “very high” risk of spreading across the globe, but a spokeswoman for the organization told CNN hours later that the statement was only intended to address the risk of an outbreak, saying it “sounds a bit more frightening than it really is.”

President Joe Biden said the same day that Omicron was “cause for concern, not a cause for panic.” Nonetheless, his administration over the weekend banned travelers from seven African nations in an effort to stall the variant’s spread.

Watch above via Fox News.