Covid-19 pandemic: Data, vax news mark small victories in Omicron battle

Two vaccine makers, AstraZeneca and Novavax, said their shots protected against Omicron as UK data suggested it may cause proportionally fewer hospital cases than the Delta coronavirus variant, though public health experts warned the battle against Covid-19 was far from over.

Similarly encouraging signs about hospitalisation rates emerged from South Africa on Wednesday, but the head of a leading African health agency joined the World Health Organization in cautioning that it was too soon to draw broad conclusions about Omicron's virulence.

Lufthansa said it planned to cut 33,000 flights from its winter schedule due to the spread of the Omicron variant and related travel restrictions.

“From mid-January to February, we see a sharp downturn in bookings,” CEO Carsten Spohr told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper on Thursday, adding that 33,000 flights was equivalent to about 10 per cent of the flight plan.

But a study found that booster of the vaccine made by China’s Sinovac Biotech, one of the most widely used in the world, didn’t produce sufficient levels of neutralising antibodies to protect against the Omicron variant.  

Coronavirus infections have soared wherever highly infectious Omicron has spread, triggering new restrictions in many countries. 

In Italy, the first Western country to be hit by the pandemic last year, the National Health Institute said Omicron would soon predominate, while Greece banned public Christmas festivities to curb its spread. Both countries also made outdoor mask-wearing mandatory.

The US Supreme Court said it would hear arguments on an expedited basis on President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 shot-or-test rule for large employers and his separate vaccine mandate for health-care workers.

The justices will hear both cases at a special January 7 session, weighing whether to let the rules take effect in the face of a barrage of legal challenges.

Boris Johnson, meanwhile, will wait until after Christmas to announce any new curbs to tackle the Omicron Covid-19 strain, which has already pushed daily cases to a record daily level above 100,000. Any announcement will not come until the week after Christmas, people familiar with the matter said Thursday.