An American woman weeping while sitting next to her dying husband, and is comforted by a nurse in St. Jude Medical Center's COVID-19 unit in Fullerton, California, July 31, 2020 (AP)

The World Health Organization (WHO) chief warned Tuesday it was too early for countries to either declare victory over COVID-19 or give up attempts to curb infections.

"It is premature for any country to either surrender or to declare victory," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters, adding that the virus was too dangerous and "it continues to evolve before our very eyes."

Terdos' words came in light of Denmark becoming the first country to lift all domestic policies to limit the spread of COVID-19 despite the record numbers of cases of the Omicron variant. Several other countries are also considering following in Copenhagen's footsteps.

"We're concerned that a narrative has taken hold in some countries that because of vaccines and because of Omicron's high transmissibility and lower severity, preventing transmission is no longer possible, and no longer necessary," he stressed.

He also asserted that this could not be further from the truth. "More COVID-19 transmission means more deaths," he added.

The WHO chief highlighted that 90 million COVID-19 cases have been reported to the UN's health agency since Omicron was first detected in southern Africa - more cases than in all of 2020.

Though one of the characteristics of the new COVID variants is that it is milder than its predecessors, Tedros emphasized that "we are now starting to see a very worrying increase in deaths in most regions of the world."