By Ted Re­gen­cia | AL JAZEERA

● The Omi­cron vari­ant’s ad­vance ex­pect­ed due to its con­ta­gious na­ture and has be­come dom­i­nant in France, Por­tu­gal and UK ●

(AL JAZEERA) — Omi­cron has be­come the dom­i­nant coro­n­avirus strain in France which joins oth­er Eu­ro­pean coun­tries like the Unit­ed King­dom and Por­tu­gal as num­ber of cas­es surged in the past few days.

In the US, health ex­perts have urged Amer­i­cans to pre­pare for se­vere dis­rup­tions in the first weeks of 2022, as the ris­ing wave of COVID-19 cas­es led by the Omi­cron vari­ant threat­ened hos­pi­tals, schools and oth­er sec­tors im­pact­ing their dai­ly lives.

Mean­while, Aus­tralia’s city of Syd­ney is gear­ing up for New Year’s Eve cel­e­bra­tions on Fri­day de­spite a record Omi­cron surge. A to­tal of 21,151 cas­es were re­port­ed on Fri­day.

Here are the lat­est up­dates:

Spain’s coro­n­avirus dai­ly in­ci­dence rate pass­es 1,000 for first time

De­spite a vac­ci­na­tion rate of around 80 per cent, Spain will end 2021 with one of the high­est in­ci­dences of coro­n­avirus in Eu­rope.

The num­ber of new in­fec­tions per 100,000 in­hab­i­tants with­in 24 hours climbed to 1,086, the health min­istry an­nounced, the first time the 1,000 mark was ex­ceed­ed.

Mean­while, the au­thor­i­ties claim that the sit­u­a­tion in the hos­pi­tals is still large­ly un­der con­trol, al­so thanks to the high vac­ci­na­tion rate, as the vac­cine in most cas­es en­sures in­fec­tion with­out symp­toms or a milder course of the dis­ease.

Philip­pines on alert as COVID-19 in­fec­tions hit 2-month high

A healthcare worker inoculates Encarnacion Tan Suan, 86, at a vaccination centre in San Juan City, Metro Manila, amid the coronavirus disease outbreak, in the Philippines, November 29, 2021. [File: Peter Blaza/Reuters]

Philip­pine of­fi­cials have warned against a rise in COVID-19 cas­es over the New Year pe­ri­od as in­fec­tions in the South­east Asian coun­try hit a two-month high.

The health min­istry record­ed 2,961 new coro­n­avirus in­fec­tions on Fri­day and re­port­ed a pos­i­tiv­i­ty rate of 10.3 per­cent, dou­ble the 5 per­cent rec­om­mend­ed by the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion.

The Philip­pines has so far de­tect­ed four Omi­cron cas­es, all of which were in quar­an­tine, al­though the coun­try’s genome se­quenc­ing ca­pac­i­ty is lim­it­ed.

“It is pru­dent to as­sume that Omi­cron is al­ready in cir­cu­la­tion, or is al­ready in the com­mu­ni­ty,” Health Sec­re­tary Fran­cis­co Duque told a sep­a­rate news con­fer­ence.

Is­rael be­gins ad­min­is­ter­ing 4th vac­cine dose

Is­rael has be­gun de­liv­er­ing a fourth vac­cine dose for peo­ple most vul­ner­a­ble to coro­n­avirus, be­com­ing one of the first coun­tries to do so as it pre­pares for a wave of in­fec­tions dri­ven by the omi­cron vari­ant.

The roll­out of the fourth dose be­gan at Is­rael’s She­ba Med­ical Cen­ter Fri­day morn­ing and was ad­min­is­tered to heart and lung trans­plant pa­tients.

Hong Kong says Omi­cron has spread de­spite COVID re­stric­tions

A woman wearing face a mask, walks down a street in Hong Kong on November 29, 2021. [File: Kin Cheung/AP Photo]

Hong Kong’s health of­fi­cials said the Omi­cron vari­ant of the coro­n­avirus has made its way past some of the world’s tough­est COVID 19 re­stric­tions, with the city re­port­ing its first cas­es out­side its strict quar­an­tine sys­tem.

Hong Kong’s last COVID-19 case tracked out­side its quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ties and ho­tels was dis­cov­ered in Oc­to­ber. Pre­vi­ous in­fec­tions with the Omi­cron vari­ant were dis­cov­ered dur­ing quar­an­tines of peo­ple re­turn­ing to Hong Kong.

Health Sec­re­tary Sophia Chan told re­porters one of four air crew mem­bers who test­ed pos­i­tive af­ter their re­turn to Hong Kong had breached home quar­an­tine rules by go­ing to a restau­rant, where he passed the virus to his fa­ther and a client sit­ting at an­oth­er ta­ble.

“Omi­cron is rag­ing around the world … and it has now found its way in­to the com­mu­ni­ty,” Chan said.

Omi­cron is now the main coro­n­avirus vari­ant in France: of­fi­cial

Omi­cron has be­come the main coro­n­avirus strain in France where the num­ber of in­fec­tions has seen a big in­crease in the last few days, the coun­try’s pub­lic health agency has said.

“62.4 per­cent of tests showed a pro­file com­pat­i­ble with the Omi­cron vari­ant” at the start of this week, com­pared to 15 per­cent the pre­vi­ous week, the agency said.

The strain has con­tributed to the cur­rent flare-up in cas­es, which topped 200,000 in the 24-hour pe­ri­od from Wednes­day to Thurs­day.

In­dia’s Serum In­sti­tute ap­plies for full ap­proval of Co­v­ishield vac­cine

Serum In­sti­tute Of In­dia has ap­plied to the coun­try’s drug reg­u­la­tor and the health min­istry for full ap­proval of its COVID-19 vac­cine Co­v­ishield, the com­pa­ny’s chief ex­ec­u­tive said on Fri­day.

Screenshot of announcement made on Twitter feed of Serum Institute CEO, Adar Poonwalla.

Serum In­sti­tute, which pro­duces As­traZeneca’s COVID-19 vac­cine un­der the brand name Co­v­ishield, has sup­plied more than 1.25 bil­lion dos­es of the shot in In­dia.

South Africa lifts cur­few as it says fourth wave peaks

South Africa has lift­ed a mid­night to 4am cur­few on peo­ple’s move­ment with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, be­liev­ing the coun­try has passed the peak of its fourth COVID-19 wave dri­ven by the Omi­cron vari­ant, a gov­ern­ment state­ment said.

The coun­try made the changes based on the tra­jec­to­ry of the pan­dem­ic, lev­els of vac­ci­na­tion and avail­able ca­pac­i­ty in the health sec­tor, ac­cord­ing to a press re­lease is­sued by Mondli Gun­gubele, a min­is­ter in the pres­i­den­cy. South Africa is at the low­est of its five-stage COVID-19 alert lev­els.

‘Peo­ple miss trav­el’: IA­TA bull­ish on Asia trav­el re­bound in 2022

Asia will re­open to trav­el as more is learned about the Omi­cron vari­ant, with the re­cent tight­en­ing of bor­ders on­ly a “tem­po­rary speed bump” on the road to re­cov­ery, ac­cord­ing to a top air­line in­dus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view, Philip Goh, re­gion­al head of the In­ter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port As­so­ci­a­tion, told Al Jazeera he was op­ti­mistic about the re­sump­tion of trav­el in Asia in 2022 de­spite the re­gion’s dou­bling down on trav­el re­stric­tions in re­sponse to the vari­ant.

“Peo­ple miss trav­el and they want to trav­el. You can­not sub­sti­tute a hug, a hand­shake with a vir­tu­al zoom call,” Goh said. “Nor can videos cap­ture and in­vig­o­rate the sens­es stim­u­lat­ed by the sights, sounds and scents of the places we trav­el to.”

Chi­nese cities on COVID alert as New Year hol­i­day looms

Chi­na is on high alert against COVID-19 as the New Year hol­i­day looms, with the city of Xi­an un­der lock­down while sev­er­al New Year’s Eve events in oth­er cities have been can­celled and some provinces urged re­straint in trav­el dur­ing the fes­tive sea­son.

Chi­na re­port­ed 166 lo­cal­ly trans­mit­ted in­fec­tions with con­firmed symp­toms for Thurs­day, ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Health Com­mis­sion, with 161 from Xi­an, which is fight­ing the worst out­break for a Chi­nese city this year.

The num­ber of do­mes­ti­cal­ly trans­mit­ted in­fec­tions in Xi­an have ex­ceed­ed 1,200 dur­ing the De­cem­ber 9-30 pe­ri­od.

Syd­ney gears up for New Year’s Eve cel­e­bra­tions de­spite record Omi­cron surge

A man jogs towards the iconic Opera House in Sydney on July 23, 2021, amid a coronavirus outbreak that state leaders said has become a “national emergency”. [File: Saeed Khan/AFP]

Syd­ney, the Aus­tralian city worst-af­fect­ed by the Omi­cron wave, will press ahead with New Year’s Eve cel­e­bra­tions on Fri­day, with au­thor­i­ties en­cour­ag­ing rev­ellers to come out and en­joy the fes­tiv­i­ties de­spite a record num­ber of COVID-19 cas­es.

Thou­sands are ex­pect­ed to flock to prime har­bour­side spots to watch Syd­ney’s fa­mous fire­works, the tra­di­tion­al 12-minute py­rotech­nic dis­play to ring in the new year, with queues form­ing at many van­tage points since ear­ly morn­ing.

Prime Min­is­ter Scott Mor­ri­son wished peo­ple to “en­joy the evening”, while New South Wales Pre­mier Do­minic Per­rot­tet urged every­one to “head out and en­joy New Year’s” as dai­ly in­fec­tions in the state near­ly dou­bled to a record 21,151 on Fri­day.

New York’s Times Square show will go on, may­or says

People queue for a COVID-19 test in Times Square New YorkPeople queue for a COVID test in Times Square as the Omicron coronavirus variant continues to spread in New York City, US. [File: Andrew Kelly/Reuters]

New York City will ring in 2022 in Times Square as planned de­spite record num­bers of COVID-19 in­fec­tions in the city, the state and around the na­tion, May­or Bill de Bla­sio said on Thurs­day.

“We want to show that we’re mov­ing for­ward, and we want to show the world that New York City is fight­ing our way through this,” de Bla­sio, whose last day in of­fice is on Fri­day, said on NBC’s “To­day” show.

Af­ter ban­ning rev­ellers from Times Square a year ago due to the pan­dem­ic, city of­fi­cials pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced plans for a scaled-back New Year’s bash with small­er crowds and vac­ci­na­tions re­quired.