Many countries in the West are pinning their hopes on third, booster vaccine

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The European Union’s drug regulator is prepared for the possibility that vaccines may have to be tweaked to fight Omicron, although there is no evidence yet, the agency’s chief said.

“There is no answer whether we will need to adapt vaccines,” European Medicines Agency executive director Emer Cook said.

‘We’re not going back to lockdowns’
Omicron has hit financial markets hard in recent days, raising investor fears for the global economic recovery as the pandemic cuts travel and seizes up supply chains.

But world shares gained on Tuesday, with the dollar softening as appetite for riskier assets made a cautious return. The broader Euro STOXX 600 rose 1.2%. Germany’s DAX’s added 1.13%, with London’s FTSE climbing 1.02%.

Wall Street’s main indexes were set to rise, following a steep selloff in the previous session.

In Australia, where Omicron cases have surged but hospitalisations remain relatively low, Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged state and territory leaders to avoid further lockdowns.

“We’re not going back to lockdowns. We’re going forward to live with this virus with common sense and responsibility,” he said.

In the United States, the Biden administration said it would open federal COVID-19 testing sites in New York this week and buy 500 million at-home rapid tests that Americans can order online for free.

Omicron now accounts for 73% of all new cases in the United States, up from less than 1% at the beginning of the month.

The variant was first detected last month in southern Africa and Hong Kong and so far has been reported in at least 89 countries.

The severity of illness it causes remains unclear, but the World Health Organization warned it is spreading faster than the Delta variant and is causing infections in people already vaccinated or who have recovered from the COVID-19 disease.

More than 274 million people have been reported to be infected by the coronavirus globally since the pandemic began nearly two years ago. More than 5.65 million people have died.

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