SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGEN­CIES

■ More coun­tries see coro­n­avirus cas­es surge to high­est lev­els ever amid the rapid spread of Omi­cron vari­ant ■

(AL JAZEERA) — New cas­es of COVID-19 in the Unit­ed States have soared to their high­est lev­el on record, large­ly dri­ven by the high­ly con­ta­gious Omi­cron coro­n­avirus vari­ant.

Aus­tralia al­so hit a new record on Thurs­day as it nar­rowed its de­f­i­n­i­tion of close con­tacts of coro­n­avirus cas­es and re­laxed re­quire­ments for COVID-19 tests, in a bid to re­lieve pres­sure on test­ing sites.

Mean­while, the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion warned that the Omi­cron and Delta vari­ants could pro­duce a “tsuna­mi” of COVID-19 cas­es that will put “im­mense pres­sure” on health­care sys­tems.

Here are the lat­est up­dates:

UK health of­fi­cials pre­pare for Omi­cron surge at hos­pi­tals

Eng­land is build­ing tem­po­rary struc­tures at hos­pi­tals around the coun­try to pre­pare for a surge of COVID-19 pa­tients as the Omi­cron vari­ant fu­els a new wave of in­fec­tions.

The Na­tion­al Health Ser­vice (NHS) said on Thurs­day it will be­gin set­ting up “surge hubs” this week at eight hos­pi­tals, each with the ca­pac­i­ty to treat about 100 pa­tients. Staff are prepar­ing plans to cre­ate as many as 4,000 “su­per surge” beds should they be need­ed.

The UK re­port­ed a record 183,037 con­firmed new coro­n­avirus in­fec­tions on Wednes­day, 32 per­cent more than the pre­vi­ous day.

French law­mak­er’s res­i­dence at­tacked in sus­pect­ed an­ti-vac­ci­na­tion protest

French of­fi­cials on Thurs­day de­cried an act of van­dal­ism com­mit­ted against a rul­ing par­ty law­mak­er by sus­pect­ed an­ti-vac­ci­na­tion pro­test­ers in Cham­bly, north of Paris.

The house of Pas­cal Bois, an MP for Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron’s rul­ing LREM par­ty, was tar­get­ed in the night be­tween Tues­day and Wednes­day.

The garage was set on fire and an ad­ja­cent wall spray-paint­ed with phras­es in­clud­ing “Vote No”.

“Such crim­i­nal acts of in­tim­i­da­tion are not ac­cept­able in a democ­ra­cy,” In­te­ri­or Min­is­ter Ger­ald Dar­manin said on his Twit­ter ac­count on Thurs­day, adding that po­lice had opened an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Xi’an res­i­dents com­plain of food short­ages as lock­down drags on

Res­i­dents in the locked-down Chi­nese city of Xi’an have told AFP they were strug­gling to find enough food, de­spite Bei­jing in­sist­ing that there were now ad­e­quate sup­plies.

All 13 mil­lion res­i­dents of Xi’an were placed un­der lock­down eight days ago. Ini­tial­ly, one res­i­dent was al­lowed out every two days to stock up on sup­plies. This was then re­duced to every three days, be­fore res­i­dents were no longer al­lowed out.

State TV showed footage of work­ers in haz­mat suits sort­ing eggs, meat and veg­eta­bles, be­fore de­liv­er­ing food to res­i­dents door-to-door. AFP re­ceived com­plains that the sup­plies were low and the veg­eta­bles were not fresh.

Lo­cal of­fi­cials ad­mit­ted that there had been trou­ble pro­vid­ing es­sen­tial sup­plies. But com­merce min­istry spokesman Gao Feng said at a press brief­ing on Thurs­day that “the to­tal sup­ply of dai­ly ne­ces­si­ties in Xi’an is suf­fi­cient.”

Masks to be manda­to­ry out­doors in Paris

Res­i­dents and tourists in Paris will be re­quired to wear face masks out­doors start­ing Fri­day as France this week re­port­ed a dai­ly record of 208,000 new COVID-19 cas­es.

The Paris po­lice pre­fec­ture said the mask rule will ap­ply to peo­ple ages 12 and over, al­though in­di­vid­u­als will be ex­cept while rid­ing bi­cy­cles or mo­tor­cy­cles, trav­el­ing in ve­hi­cles and do­ing ex­er­cise.

Those who do not com­ply face fines of 135 eu­ros ($153).

Masks al­ready are manda­to­ry in shops, pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties and of­fice build­ings and on pub­lic trans­porta­tion in France.

Italy tight­ens re­stric­tions for ac­cess to pub­lic places

Italy ap­proved a new de­cree on Thurs­day re­strict­ing ac­cess to an ar­ray of pub­lic places to peo­ple who are un­vac­ci­nat­ed or whose sec­ond vac­ci­na­tion took place more than 120 days ago.

The mea­sures, which will be en­forced start­ing Jan­u­ary 10, will re­strict ac­cess to ho­tels, con­gress cen­tres, lo­cal and long-dis­tance pub­lic trans­port, ski lifts and fes­ti­vals, among oth­er places.

The new rules will stay in place un­til the end of the state of emer­gency on March 31.

In the de­cree, the gov­ern­ment al­so de­cid­ed to sus­pend pre­cau­tion­ary quar­an­tine for peo­ple who were vac­ci­nat­ed or re­cov­ered from COVID-19 and who had close con­tact with a per­son who had test­ed pos­i­tive.

J&J boost­er ef­fec­tive against hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion in South Africa, ear­ly re­sults sug­gest

A boost­er dose of John­son & John­son (J&J) sin­gle-dose COVID-19 vac­cine was 84 per­cent ef­fec­tive at pre­vent­ing hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion in South African health­care work­ers who be­came in­fect­ed as the Omi­cron vari­ant spread, re­searchers said on Thurs­day.

The study, which has not been peer-re­viewed, was based on a sec­ond dose of the J&J vac­cine ad­min­is­tered to 69,092 health­care work­ers be­tween No­vem­ber 15 and De­cem­ber 20.

The tri­al has been eval­u­at­ing the ef­fi­ca­cy of the J&J vac­cine in the field af­ter it was tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed due to con­cerns over ex­treme­ly rare cas­es of blood clots.

Sev­er­al stud­ies have sug­gest­ed that a boost­er dose pro­vides sig­nif­i­cant pro­tec­tion against se­vere ill­ness.

US cas­es soar to high­est lev­els ever

New COVID-19 in­fec­tions in the US have reached their high­est lev­el on record, at more than 265,000 per day on av­er­age.

The num­ber of new dai­ly cas­es has more than dou­bled over the past two weeks, eclips­ing the old mark of 250,000 set in mid-Jan­u­ary, ac­cord­ing to da­ta kept by Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty.

Omi­cron has cast a pall over the Christ­mas and New Year’s hol­i­days, forc­ing com­mu­ni­ties to scale back or call off their fes­tiv­i­ties.

Dr An­tho­ny Fau­ci, the top US in­fec­tious dis­ease ex­pert, said that there is no need to can­cel small home gath­er­ings for those who have re­ceived two or three vac­cine dos­es.

Aus­tralia re­lax­es test­ing rules

Aus­tralia has hit a new record, with dai­ly cas­es top­ping 20,000 for the first time in the pan­dem­ic.

This came as the gov­ern­ment nar­rowed its de­f­i­n­i­tion of “close con­tacts” of coro­n­avirus cas­es as peo­ple who live in the same house­hold with an in­fect­ed per­son. They would have to iso­late for sev­en days and would on­ly have to get a PCR test if they have COVID-19 symp­toms.

The rules are be­ing re­laxed to stop asymp­to­matic peo­ple from be­ing forced in­to iso­la­tion, es­pe­cial­ly in health­care, hos­pi­tal­i­ty and air­lines, and cut long lines of peo­ple forced to get PCR tests for in­ter­state trav­el or be­cause they have been at a pub­lic site with a con­firmed case.

The coun­try’s med­ical as­so­ci­a­tion crit­i­cised the gov­ern­ment’s re­de­f­i­n­i­tion of close con­tacts, say­ing it would fur­ther ac­cel­er­ate the out­break.