US President Joe Biden pledged to ease a shortage of COVID-19 tests as the Omicron variant threatened to overwhelm hospitals across the country.
Some 11,500 flights have been scrapped worldwide since Friday and tens of thousands more delayed, during one of the year's busiest travel periods - with multiple airlines saying spikes in cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant have caused staffing shortages.
Opening the way for more people to return to work sooner and minimising the prospect of mass labour shortages, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday cut isolation for asymptomatic COVID-19 cases from 10 to five days. Cases in the US are already on track to reach record highs in January, fuelled by large pockets of unvaccinated residents as well as lack of access to quick and easy testing.Governments worldwide are scrambling to boost vaccinations, stressing that the overwhelming majority of hospitalisations and deaths are occurring among the unvaccinated.
And in Greece, authorities will require bars and restaurants to close at midnight from 3 January, when establishments will also have to limit the number of diners per table to six.In the Chinese city of Xi'an, authorities were scrambling to contain the country's worst COVID-19 outbreak in 21 months.
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