Omicron pushing Covid out of pandemic phase

"Omicron, with its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will ultimately find just about everybody. There's no way we're going to eradicate this."

Anthony Fauci top US infectious disease official

The spread of the Omicron variant is pushing Covid towards being an endemic disease that humanity can live with, although it remains a pandemic for now, the EU's drug watchdog said.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) also expressed doubts about giving a fourth vaccine shot to the general population, saying repeated boosters were not a "sustainable" strategy.

"Nobody knows exactly when we will be at the end of the tunnel but we will be there," Marco Cavaleri, head of vaccine strategy at the Amsterdam-based regulator, told journalists on Tuesday evening.

"With the increase of immunity in population -- and with Omicron, there will be a lot of natural immunity taking place on top of vaccination -- we will be fast moving towards a scenario that will be closer to endemicity," he added.

But he stressed that "we should not forget we are still in a pandemic", noting the huge burden on healthcare from the surge in Omicron.

"If we have a strategy in which we give boosters every four months, we will end up potentially having problems with immune response," Cavaleri said. "And secondly of course there is the risk of fatigue in the population with continuous administration of boosters."

Countries should instead start thinking about spacing out boosters at longer intervals, Cavaleri said.

Top US scientist Anthony Fauci said on Tuesday the United States is approaching the "threshold" of transitioning to living with the coronavirus as a manageable disease, despite soaring cases and record-high hospitalisations, reports AFP.

Meanwhile, Germany has reported more than 80,000 new daily Covid-19 infections, marking a new daily record.

Austria's daily new infections have risen to a new record of 18,427, newspaper Kronen Zeitung reported yesterday as cases have been surging because of the spread of the Omicron variant.

India reported 194,720 new cases yesterday, the most since late May, health ministry data showed.

Saudi Arabia has registered its highest daily number of new infections so far, health ministry data showed, breaking through 5,000 cases yesterday.

President Vladimir Putin said yesterday Russia had two weeks to prepare for a fresh wave of coronavirus infections driven by the Omicron variant after the WHO warned of a surge in Europe.

Indonesia opened its coronavirus booster campaign to the public as the country records rising infections driven by the Omicron variant.

The free shots will be given to the elderly and at-risk residents as a priority, but will be available to everyone who received their second dose six months prior, President Joko Widodo said on Tuesday after announcing the decision.

The coronavirus has killed at least 5,503,347 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources yesterday.