■ WHO mem­ber states adopt res­o­lu­tion to start draft­ing a glob­al agree­ment on how to pre­vent and tack­le the next pan­dem­ic ■

Tourism busi­ness­es that were just find­ing their foot­ing af­ter near­ly two years of dev­as­ta­tion wrought by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic are be­ing rat­tled again as coun­tries throw up new bar­ri­ers to trav­el in an ef­fort to con­tain the omi­cron vari­ant.

Trinidad & To­ba­go joined sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries on the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion’s Lev­el 4 COVID-19 Ad­vi­so­ry List. The an­nounce­ment on Tues­day, in the US pub­lic health agency’s week­ly up­date, comes mere days af­ter T&T reg­is­tered 10,000 ac­tive COVID-19 cas­es. Ac­cord­ing to the CDC, a coun­try is moved to Lev­el 4 when more than 500 cas­es per 100,000 res­i­dents are reg­is­tered in the past 28 days.    

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — Gov­ern­ment health ad­vis­ers on Tues­day weighed the ben­e­fits and risks of a close­ly watched drug from Mer­ck that could soon be­come the first U.S.-au­tho­rized pill for pa­tients to take at home to treat COVID-19.

GENE­VA (AP) — The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion warned Mon­day that the glob­al risk from the omi­cron vari­ant is “very high” based on the ear­ly ev­i­dence, say­ing the mu­tat­ed coro­n­avirus could lead to surges with “se­vere con­se­quences.”

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter, Bas­deo Pan­day, has called for the seg­re­ga­tion of vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple in the coun­try.

● French min­is­ter for over­seas ter­ri­to­ries is hold­ing talks in Guade­loupe amid days of protests over COVID curbs ●

● The as­sess­ment from the head of the vac­cine mak­er comes as Hong Kong and oth­ers an­nounce trav­el curbs ●

WASH­ING­TON — The Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion on Mon­day broad­ened its rec­om­men­da­tion for COVID-19 boost­er shots for all adults as the new omi­cron vari­ant is iden­ti­fied in more coun­tries.

WHO says pre­lim­i­nary ev­i­dence in­di­cates an ‘in­creased risk of re­in­fec­tion with Omi­cron’ com­pared with oth­er coro­n­avirus vari­ants, but in­for­ma­tion is lim­it­ed.

Shares of Mod­er­na ex­tend­ed their ral­ly for a sec­ond trad­ing ses­sion af­ter the drug­mak­er said it had mo­bilised hun­dreds of work­ers on Thurs­day to start work on an Omi­cron jab.

The Min­istry of Health will be ad­min­is­ter­ing COVID-19 boost­er shots for all ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed in­di­vid­u­als.