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NACI’s new guidance for the previously infected The National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) has issued new guidance around vaccination for those who have been infected with COVID-19: you should still get immunized. NACI said Friday that while infection alone may provide some protection, vaccination strengthens the immune response and provides more robust and longer-lasting immunity against the virus. The advisory body recommends Canadians who catch COVID-19 before becoming fully vaccinated get their next dose eight weeks after symptoms start or after testing positive. Meanwhile, those eligible for a booster who have been infected while fully vaccinated can get boosted three months after symptoms start or a positive test result, provided it’s been at least six months from their second shot. Global News reporter Aaron D’Andrea has more on the latest NACI guidance here. 
WHO warns of ‘worrying’ Omicron death rates Scientists are tracking a “worrying” increase in COVID-19 deaths as the Omicron variant continues to spread across the globe, World Health Organization officials said earlier this week. "Since Omicron was first identified just 10 weeks ago, almost 90 million cases have been reported to WHO," said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, during a press conference Tuesday. "We're now starting to see a very worrying increase in deaths in most regions of the world." Those comments came on the heels of the WHO’s recent warning that it would be “dangerous to assume Omicron could be the final variant of the pandemic. In Canada, 34,483 have died from the virus, with more than 100 new deaths logged on Friday, according to the COVID-19 tracker. 
Q: Some people are saying the previous variants, Delta and Alpha, have “died out” and are no longer present or a risk to individuals, and that Omicron has replaced them. Is this true? While the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) still lists Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta as variants of concern, Omicron is by far the most dominant in Canada. Omicron made up 92 per cent of 404 COVID-19 samples in Canada during the week of Jan. 9, according to the most recent PHAC data. Meanwhile, during the same week, 7.9 per cent of the samples tested positive for the Delta variant. Dr. Anna Banerji, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at the University of Toronto's schools of medicine and public health, says Omicron has an advantage over the other variants, and crowds them out. “They can't compete,” she tells Global News. | 
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