Half of Europe may catch Omicron

More than half of people in Europe are projected to catch Omicron in the next two months, the WHO said yesterday, as millions in China faced fresh lockdowns on the two-year anniversary of the world's first Covid death.

The highly-transmissible variant has ripped through countries at breakneck pace, forcing governments to impose fresh measures and scramble to roll out booster shots.

Europe has been at the epicentre of alarming new outbreaks -- hospital admissions and deaths are creeping up as well -- and the World Health Organization said yesterday Omicron could infect half of all people in the region at current infection rates.

"The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) forecasts that more than 50 percent of the population in the region will be infected with Omicron in the next six to eight weeks," said Hans Kluge, regional director for WHO's European office.

Kluge confirmed that Omicron is more transmissible than previous variants, but stressed "approved vaccines do continue to provide good protection against severe disease and death, including for Omicron".

The city of Anyang in Henan province in China on Monday night told its five million residents to not leave their homes or drive cars on the roads, China's official Xinhua news agency said.

Last week, the one million people in Yuzhou -- also a city in Henan -- were told to stay at home. Xi'an, home to 13 million people, is in its third week of lockdown, reports AFP.

China reported 110 new local virus cases yesterday, a tiny figure compared with the hundreds of thousands emerging daily in global hotspots such as the United States.

The United States reported 1.35 million new coronavirus infections on Monday, according to a Reuters tally, the highest daily total for any country in the world.

India reported 168,063 new infections yesterday, a 20-fold rise in a month.

Hong Kong, which has some of the toughest coronavirus border restrictions in the world, also ramped up its curbs yesterday to fight an Omicron outbreak, shutting kindergartens and primary schools until early February.

The same day, Japan extended until the end of next month a strict Covid border policy that bars almost all new foreign arrivals.

In Italy, Prime Minister Mario Draghi urged people to get shots as new restrictions came into force Monday, barring the unvaccinated from a large number of public transport and venues such as restaurants, gyms and cinemas.

The known Covid death toll in Poland, where the government has also urged people to get vaccinated, crossed 100,000, Health Minister Adam Niedzielski said yesterday.

France on Monday said Covid rules would be eased for schools as record-high case numbers shut down thousands of classes and sparked concern among parents and teachers.

Under the first change, parents will no longer be obliged to pick up their child immediately for Covid testing if he or she is a contact case.