Omicron variant of coronavirus cannot be dismissed as being “mild", said Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, the regional director of WHO South-East Asia region, on Thursday. "The overall threat posed by Omicron largely depends on three key questions: (1) how transmissible the variant is; (2) how well vaccines and prior SARS-CoV-2 infection protect against infection, transmission, clinical disease and death; and (3) how virulent the variant is as compared to other variants," Singh was quoted as saying by news agency ANI. “Based on the currently limited evidence, Omicron appears to be spreading faster, at a rate not seen with any other previous variant.