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A staff member at a restaurant in Paris, France, checks the vaccine passport of a customer before entry. (EPA/Yonhap News)

With the number of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 breaking records day after day in the US and France edging closer to a staggering 500,000 cases per day, the World Health Organization warned that the Omicron variant of the virus should not be taken lightly.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press conference Tuesday that the Omicron surge around the world resulted in 18 million reported cases last week, demonstrating that the COVID-19 pandemic is “nowhere near over.”

He continued, “The narrative that [Omicron] is a mild disease is misleading,” adding that hospitalizations and deaths have continued to increase due to the variant. He also said that “the virus is circulating far too intensely with many still vulnerable,” warning of the possibility of new variants emerging.

The COVID-19 situation in the US and Europe show no signs of improvement. According to The New York Times, the daily average hospitalizations due to COVID-19 in the US reached 156,998 as of Monday — a 54% increase from two weeks prior and an all-time high since the pandemic.

Daily deaths tallied at 1,961, also a 54% increase in two weeks. The number of newly confirmed cases for the day was recorded at 712,051, with The Times explaining that the figure may be an undercount as many states did not release their COVID-19 data due to the long weekend on account of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

In Europe, both France and Germany are seeing worsening COVID-19 conditions. In France, a record number of 464,769 individuals tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday according to Agence France-Presse.

Germany also continued to experience the fast spread of the virus with 74,405 newly confirmed cases on the same day according to the news outlet dpa. The Robert Koch Institute, a government agency under Germany’s Federal Ministry of Health, announced that the seven-day incidence rate per 100,000 German inhabitants tallied at 553.2, a new record.

By Shin Gi-sub, senior staff writer

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