COVID news from Jan­u­ary 17: Cana­da au­tho­ris­es pill for adults with mild, mod­er­ate COVID who are at high risk of be­com­ing se­ri­ous­ly ill.

By Fed­er­i­ca Mar­si and Us­aid Sid­diqui-Al­jazeera

Cana­da’s health reg­u­la­tor has ap­proved a pill by Pfiz­er that treats the ef­fects of COVID-19 amid soar­ing num­bers of in­fec­tions across the coun­try.

Mean­while, the health min­is­ter of Poland said the coun­try is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a fifth wave of COVID-19 cas­es

Sev­er­al Chi­nese cities are on high alert as hun­dreds of mil­lions of peo­ple trav­el around Chi­na be­fore the Lu­nar New Year cel­e­bra­tion on Feb­ru­ary 1.

Gov­ern­ments around the world are al­so en­forc­ing stricter mea­sures to con­tain the spread of the high­ly con­ta­gious Omi­cron vari­ant.

In the Philip­pines, un­vac­ci­nat­ed com­muters have been banned from ac­cess­ing pub­lic trans­port, de­spite op­po­si­tion.

This live blog is now closed, thanks for join­ing us. Here are the up­dates for Jan­u­ary 17.