A leading infectious diseases expert says the “fear is out proportion to the risk” when it comes to the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19.

It was first identified in South Africa last month, and the World Health Organisation quickly labelled it as a “variant of concern” given its high number of mutations.

But so far the evidence say it’s more contagious but less lethal.

That’s despite the UK recording the world’s first publicly confirmed death from the strain overnight.

“I think we need to take a bit of a chill pill on this, because so far there’s not evidence that it’s doing anything different to what we expect,” Infectious disease expert Peter Collignon said.

“We’re going to have new variants, we’ve had them before, we’ll have new ones.”

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