No one has died with the new super mutant Omicron Covid variant despite the strain being spotted in 38 countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) has revealed .

The US and Australia became the latest countries to confirm locally transmitted cases of the variant, as Omicron infections pushed South Africa’s total cases past three million.

And India confirmed its third Omicron infection today, with cases also now spotted in Sri Lanka, South Korea and Malaysia.

The WHO warned it could take weeks to determine how infectious the variant is, whether it causes more severe illness and how effective treatments and vaccines are against it.

‘We’re going to get the answers that everybody out there needs,’ WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said.

The WHO said yesterday it had still not seen any reports of deaths related to Omicron, but the new variant’s spread has led to warnings that it could cause more than half of Europe’s Covid cases in the next few months.