RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Angelique Coetzee, president of the South African Medical Association and the doctor who discovered Omicron, said in an interview with the Austrian television station Servus TV, “I was put under a lot of pressure by politicians from Europe, but also by other scientists: Please don’t go out and say it’s a mild disease.”
Her answer to that question all along was, “Then what is it? Look at the WHO definition of what a mild disease is, and if you don’t like it, then you have to change the definition.”
At some point I said that Omicron is a mild disease in South Africa. But in Europe, it’s a serious, serious, serious disease because the politicians wanted me to say that.”