The lit­tle that is known about the Omi­cron vari­ant of COVID-19 should be of enough con­cern to our pub­lic health of­fi­cials for them to make im­me­di­ate prepa­ra­tions for its in­evitable ar­rival in­to this coun­try.  

(PA­HO) – While ex­perts work to bet­ter un­der­stand the new WHO-des­ig­nat­ed “vari­ant of con­cern,” Omi­cron, the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) Di­rec­tor Caris­sa F. Eti­enne, called for in­creased vac­ci­na­tion and pub­lic health mea­sures to en­sure the best pos­si­ble pro­tec­tion against the virus. 

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — OPEC and al­lied oil-pro­duc­ing coun­tries have de­cid­ed to main­tain the amount of oil they pump to the world even as the new omi­cron vari­ant casts a spikey shad­ow of un­cer­tain­ty over the glob­al eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery from the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic.

PARIS (AP) — Greeks who are over age 60 and refuse coro­n­avirus vac­ci­na­tions could be hit with month­ly fines of more than one-quar­ter of their pen­sions — a get-tough pol­i­cy that the coun­try’s politi­cians say will cost votes but save lives.

The Unit­ed States will now re­quire all in­bound trav­ellers, re­gard­less of na­tion­al­i­ty or vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus, to pro­vide a neg­a­tive COVID-19 test re­sult tak­en one day pri­or to trav­el. The up­dat­ed reg­u­la­tion comes in­to force ear­ly next week, al­though the ex­act date is still un­known.

THE HAGUE, Nether­lands (AP) — The Eu­ro­pean Union drug reg­u­la­tor said Thurs­day it has start­ed a rolling re­view of a new coro­n­avirus vac­cine made by French start­up Val­ne­va, the first step to­ward giv­ing the vac­cine the green light to be used in the 27-na­tion EU.

■ UN warns trav­el bans are hin­der­ing the shar­ing of sam­ples from South Africa that could shed light on the new vari­ant ■

The Min­istry of Health has re­leased the ages of the four chil­dren who died from COVID-19 in T&T. It was re­leased by the head of the pae­di­atrics de­part­ment at the Er­ic Williams’ Med­ical Sci­ences com­plex, Dr Joanne Paul, dur­ing Wednes­day’s vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence.

The South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) is con­firm­ing that COVID-19 test­ing will be done at se­lect­ed Health Cen­tres. The pub­lic is al­so ad­vised that swab­bing will on­ly be per­formed if found af­ter med­ical as­sess­ment to have COVID-19 symp­toms and/or his­to­ry of ex­po­sure/con­tact with a con­firmed pos­i­tive in­di­vid­ual. De­tails fol­low­ing this press re­lease from SWRHA: 

The US is mov­ing to re­quire that all air trav­ellers en­ter­ing the coun­try show a neg­a­tive COVID-19 test per­formed with­in one day of de­par­ture in re­sponse to con­cerns about the new Omi­cron vari­ant, the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) said.

GENE­VA (AP) — The U.N. mi­gra­tion agency says the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic ap­pears to have ac­cel­er­at­ed “hos­tile rhetoric” against mi­grants in the world and “rad­i­cal­ly al­tered” mo­bil­i­ty, pro­ject­ing in a new re­port that trav­el and oth­er COVID-19-fight­ing re­stric­tions could damp­en mi­gra­tion world­wide as long as they re­main.

LA­GOS, Nige­ria (AP) — Nige­ria has de­tect­ed its first case of the omi­cron coro­n­avirus vari­ant in a sam­ple it col­lect­ed in Oc­to­ber, weeks be­fore South Africa alert­ed the world about the vari­ant last week, the coun­try’s na­tion­al pub­lic health in­sti­tute said Wednes­day.