Covid: European governments must urgently boost monitoring, WHO says

People alight from a bus in Rome, Italy, where masks remain compulsory on public transport. Photograph: Gregorio Borgia/AP

The World Health Organization has called on European governments to urgently reinforce rather than reduce Covid-19 monitoring, warning of a potentially difficult winter as a new wave of infections sweeps across the continent.

Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, said it was “abundantly clear” that the region faced a surge driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variants BA.2 and BA.5 and that it would intensify further as indoor mixing increases in the autumn.