Here are ten updates from across the world:
South Africa's top hospital group Netcare said patients admitted with the variant have shown much milder symptoms than earlier variants. "Their symptoms are far milder than anything we experienced during the first three waves," Netcare CEO Richard Friedland, said in a statement.
"We can prevent omicron from becoming a global crisis," the WHO chief warned on Wednesday. "This virus is changing, but our collective resolve must not." "Certain features of omicron, including its global spread and a large number of mutations, suggest it could have a major impact on the course of the pandemic," he said.
Amid a surge in cases, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced new restrictions. "We must be humble in the face of this virus", he said, adding that it was "the proportionate and the responsible thing to move to Plan B in England".
The rate of Omicron cases was doubling every two to three days, Boris Johnson said, risking a "big rise in hospitalisations".
A third dose of Covid vaccine may be needed to neutralise the variant, Pfizer and BioNTech have said, citing lab studies.
In Australia's Queensland, a new variant lineage has been found in a traveler who arrived from South Africa, reports said.
A key European health agency has warned that deaths and hospitalisations will continue to rise in the continent that has fought a tough fight against the pandemic. "In the coming weeks, there will be increasing parameters of cases, deaths, hospitalization, and ICU admissions," Andrea Ammon, the director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, said.
The variant, however, is unlikely to fully dodge vaccine protections, the WHO said.
Top US scientist Anthony Fauci on Tuesday said, "There is some suggestion that Omicron might even be less severe, because when you look at some of the cohorts that are being followed in South Africa, the ratio between the number of infections and the number of hospitalizations seems to be less than with Delta."
Two years on, the world is still fighting the pandemic and the new variant has forced the countries to impose new restrictions.
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