By KATE MAY­BER­RY, ZA­HEENA RASHEED and FED­ER­I­CA MAR­SI | AL JAZEERA

■ Gov­ern­ments across the world are tight­en­ing re­stric­tions as the Omi­cron vari­ant con­tin­ues to dri­ve up COVID-19 cas­es glob­al­ly ■

(AL JAZEERA) — The more in­fec­tious Omi­cron coro­n­avirus vari­ant ap­pears to pro­duce less se­vere dis­ease than the glob­al­ly dom­i­nant Delta strain, but it should not be cat­e­gorised as “mild”, said WHO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus.

Speak­ing at a me­dia brief­ing, di­rec­tor gen­er­al Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus al­so re­peat­ed his call for greater glob­al eq­ui­ty in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of and ac­cess to coro­n­avirus vac­cines.

He warned that based on the cur­rent rate of vac­cine roll­out, 109 coun­tries will miss the WHO’s tar­get for 70 Per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion to be ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed by Ju­ly. That aim is seen as help­ing end the acute phase of the pan­dem­ic.

Mean­while, Gov­ern­ments across the world are tight­en­ing re­stric­tions as the Omi­cron vari­ant con­tin­ues to dri­ve up COVID-19 cas­es glob­al­ly.

Elec­tion ral­lies have been can­celled in In­dia as its megac­i­ties ex­pe­ri­ence a surge in cas­es.

The num­ber of peo­ple in hos­pi­tal with coro­n­avirus is at its high­est in Britain since Feb­ru­ary last year, new fig­ures show, amid in­creas­ing pres­sure on health ser­vices.