Even though early research suggest it causes milder sickness, the WHO warned Tuesday that the Omicron coronavirus variety might overwhelm healthcare systems, as China and Germany reinstated severe restrictions to prevent fresh infection outbreaks.
Hundreds of thousands more people have been placed under house arrest in China, while infections have reached new highs in a number of US states and European countries.
Surges of Covid-19 have caused chaos around the world, with many countries attempting to strike a balance between economically painful regulations and preventing the virus’s spread.
The United States has halved the isolation period for asymptomatic cases to try and blunt the disruption, while France has ordered firms to have employees work from home at least three days a week.
Contact restrictions were in place in Germany for the second year in a row heading into the New Year, as Europe’s biggest economy shuttered nightclubs and forced sports competitions behind closed doors.
Despite facing a much smaller outbreak compared with global virus hotspots, China has not relaxed its “zero Covid” strategy, imposing stay-at-home orders in many parts of the city of Yan’an.
The hundreds of thousands of affected residents there joined the 13 million people in the city of Xi’an, who entered a sixth day of home confinement as China battled its highest daily case numbers in 21 months.
“I’m about to be starved to death,” wrote one Xi’an resident on the Twitter-like Weibo platform.
