Infection rates are surging in many parts of the world, fuelled by the spread of the highly-infectious Omicron variant.
The risk posed by the Omicron variant is still “very high”, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, after COVID-19 case numbers shot up by 11 percent globally last week.
Omicron is behind the rapid virus spikes, the WHO said in its COVID weekly epidemiological update, having overtaken the previously-dominant Delta variant in several nations, including the United Kingdom and the United States.
The news comes as several European countries, including France, the UK, Italy, Greece, and Portugal all hit record daily infections.
France reported almost 180,000 cases in a 24-hour period on Tuesday.
