COVID-19 will stifle New Year celebrations around the world for the second year running on Friday.
Governments in many countries have hurriedly scaled back festivities in an effort to contain rampant contagion, as global infections hit a record high over the past seven-day period.
Here's the latest from around the world.
United States
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday people should avoid cruise travel, regardless of vaccination status, following an increase in onboard COVID-19 cases.
It comes as US health experts warn Americans that a rising tide of COVID-19 cases led by the Omicron variant threatens major disruptions to their lives, from schools to shopping, and urged them to prepare now for a challenging month ahead.
For the second day in a row, the United States had a record number of new cases based on the seven-day average, with more than 290,000 new infections reported each day, a Reuters tally showed.
At least 18 states and Puerto Rico have set pandemic records for new cases, according to the tally. Maryland, Ohio and Washington, DC, also saw record hospitalizations as overall US COVID hospitalisations rose 27 percent.
The US Food and Drug Administration on Monday is planning to authorize booster doses of Pfizer-BioNTech's coronavirus vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds, the New York Times reported, citing people familiar with the agency's deliberations.
US regulators also plan to allow both adolescents and adults to get an extra shot of Pfizer's vaccine five months after receiving a second dose instead of the current period of six months.
UK and Europe
Italy reported 126,888 COVID-19 related cases on Thursday, against 98,030 the day before, the health ministry said, while the number of deaths rose to 156 from 148.
Thursday's infections mark a fresh record.
Italy has registered 137,247 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its outbreak emerged in February 2020, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the ninth highest in the world. The country has reported 5.98 million cases to date.
Greece also broke a record, reporting a single-day high of 35,580 COVID-19 infections on Thursday as the highly contagious Omicron becomes the dominant variant in the country.
It was the third successive daily record of cases there, with infections more than tripling since the beginning of the week.
"It seems that the raid of Omicron is very intense," Deputy Health Minister Mina Gaga said during a press briefing, adding that more than 60 percent of new cases relate to the new variant.
In the UK, the number of patients with COVID-19 occupying beds in English hospitals rose to 11,452, official data from NHS England showed on Thursday, up by 990 from a day earlier.
The number has risen by more than 4000 in the last week, the figures showed.
Turkey recorded 39,681 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, the highest number of daily infections since April 28, as Health Minister Fahrettin Koca warned about the growing prevalence of Omicron.
Russia overtakes Brazil for COVID-19 deaths
Russia has overtaken Brazil to have the world's second-highest death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic, behind the United States, data from Russia's state statistics service and Reuters calculations showed on Thursday.
The statistics service, Rosstat, said 87,527 people had died from coronavirus-related causes in November, making it the deadliest month in Russia since the start of the pandemic.
Russia's overall pandemic death toll reached 658,634, according to Reuters calculations based on Rosstat figures up to the end of November and data from the coronavirus task force for December, overtaking Brazil which has recorded 618,800 deaths.
The death toll in the United States is higher, at 825,663 people, according to a Reuters tally, but its population is more than twice as big as Russia's.
Reuters calculations also showed Russia recorded more than 835,000 excess deaths since the beginning of the outbreak in April 2020 to the end of November, compared to average mortality in 2015-2019.
Some epidemiologists say that calculating excess deaths is the best way to assess the true impact of a pandemic.
So far, Russia's death toll has not been affected by the Omicron variant and was mostly caused by a surge of infections in October and November, which health authorities blamed on the Delta variant and a slow vaccination campaign.
Israel approves fourth COVID-19 vaccine
Israel is to go ahead with second COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for people with weakened immune systems, the top government health official said on Thursday, but a final decision on wider usage is still pending.
An Israeli hospital administered fourth shots to a test group of health workers on Monday, in what it called the first major study into whether a second round of boosters will help contend with the Omicron variant. Results are expected within two weeks.
Israel was the fastest country to roll out initial vaccinations a year ago, and became one of the first to launch a booster programme after observing that immunity waned over time.
Concerned about the rapid spread of Omicron, a Health Ministry expert panel last week recommended that Israel offer a fourth jab of the Pfizer /BioNTech vaccine to medical workers and those over 60 or with compromised immune systems.
But Health Ministry director-general Nachman Ash, whose approval is needed to launch a new booster campaign, did not immediately announce a decision, with some experts arguing that there was not enough scientific data to justify fourth shots.
At a news conference on Thursday, Ash said that he had decided that a second booster would be offered only to immunocompromised people for now and that he would continue to examine whether to broaden eligibility for the shot.
Cancer treatment and organ transplants, as well as chronic diseases, can weaken immune systems.
"In light of the gaps in knowledge in the world in the present situation, we are acting cautiously and responsibly," Ash said.
