China shut down a city of 13 million people on Thursday in a bid to extinguish a tiny Covid-19 outbreak and chase its zero-case goal, as other nations around the globe battled huge infection surges driven by Omicron. 

Queen Elizabeth II has decided not to spend Christmas at the royal Sandringham estate in eastern England amid concerns about the fast-spreading omicron variant.

The palace said Monday that the 95-year-old queen will spend the holidays at Windsor Castle, west of London, where she has stayed for most of the pandemic.

Moderna said Monday that a booster dose of its COVID-19 vaccine should offer protection against the rapidly spreading omicron variant.

Moderna said lab tests showed the half-dose booster shot increased by 37 times the level of so-called neutralizing antibodies able to fight omicron.

The World Economic Forum is again delaying its much-ballyhooed annual meeting of world leaders, business executives and other elites in Davos, Switzerland, amid new uncertainties about the omicron variant of the coronavirus.

The forum, which repeatedly delayed, moved and finally canceled last year's event, says the previously planned Jan. 17-21 gathering in the alpine town will now take place in "early summer" — without giving specifics.

Through the COVAX program, the United States on Sunday delivered a donation of 336,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine to Lebanon to support the continued fight against the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

As a single dose vaccine, this J&J donation can fully inoculate 336,000 Lebanese against Covid-19, the U.S. embassy said in a statement.

Yes, pets and other animals can get the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, but health officials say the risk of them spreading it to people is low.

Dogs, cats, ferrets, rabbits, otters, hyenas and white-tailed deer are among the animals that have tested positive, in most cases after contracting it from infected people.

Travel restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus are hammering the already beleaguered travel and tourism industries and adding to the gloom in Europe in the midst of the crucial holiday season.

Travelers are rearranging or canceling trips because of tightening rules. Eurostar, which operates trains across the English Channel, sold out of tickets to France on Friday before new travel restrictions to and from Britain went into effect.

Some former vaccine skeptics in Eastern Europe have shifted over to the other side as coronavirus infections surge, countries are making it more difficult for the unvaccinated to travel abroad and authorities battle against government distrust and vaccine disinformation.

When she rolled up her sleeve in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo to take her first COVID-19 vaccine dose, Fata Keco was afraid of possible adverse side effects. But she said the worst she had to contend with over the next few days was "moderately discomforting pain" in her left arm around the site of the injection.

The lightning spread of Omicron in Europe and elsewhere added a sense of urgency to an EU summit on Thursday, with leaders struggling to present a united, bloc-wide approach.

The EU health agency ECDC on Wednesday warned that vaccinations alone would not stop the rise of the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus, and said "strong action" was urgently needed.