EU health agency says time too short for 'vaccination alone' to halt Omicron

STOCKHOLM: The

EU

health agency

ECDC

on Wednesday warned that vaccinations alone won't stop the rise of the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus, and said "strong action" was urgently needed.

"In the current situation,

vaccination

alone will not allow us to prevent the impact of the Omicron variant, because there will be no time to address the vaccination gaps that still exist,"

Andrea Ammon

, director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), said in a statement, as the agency raised their risk assessment for Omicron's impact on public health to "very high.