A French institute has predicted coronavirus cases in the France will peak in mid-January, followed by a peak in hospitalisations later this month.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia registered its highest daily number of new COVID-19 infections so far, health ministry data showed on Wednesday, breaking through 5,000 cases.
The European Medicines Agency says the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant across the continent is pushing COVID-19 towards being an endemic disease that humanity can live with.
Other key developments:
- Red Cross says Omicron threatens to overwhelm South Asia’s health systems
- The WHO predicts more than half of the people in Europe could catch Omicron by March.
- The WHO also said repeating boosters is not a good strategy against emerging variants of the virus, and that more effort has to be made to ensure poorer countries get their first course of the vaccines.
