The Latest Breaking News from Omicron

Could the COVID-19 surge in China unleash a new coronavirus mutant on the world

The big news of the week is the rapid spread of Covid in China. We look at China’s zero-Covid policy, why it failed and what’s really happening in our neighbouring country with the big Omicron spike. Should India be worried? Meanwhile, Arnab Goswami, Navika Kumar and the usual suspects on…

As the world has recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic's three-year assault, the Tiger will hand the baton off to the Rabbit. The 2022 countdown celebration was ultimately toned down when Omicron infections quickly spread and the number of new Covid-19 cases in Thailand exceeded 20,000 in February.

In February 2022, the UK government abandoned its remaining pandemic restrictions in favour of “living with COVID”. This approach relies largely on vaccines protecting people from severe disease.

What a difference a year has made

The movies returned at something close to full force this year. COVID masks all but vanished from multiplex crowds, and from the audiences at the press screenings I attended (though I kept mine handy). Sundance did cancel its in-person screenings for the second January in a row, thanks to the…

Footfall is worse than Christmas 2021 when Omicron was rife

More than a month after China started seeing an exponential surge in COVID cases, the country has only reported two virus deaths, defying the experience of other, more vaccinated and better resourced places as they reopened and fueling suspicion the true scale of fatalities is being hidden.

New antivirals, more research on long Covid and, hopefully, treatments: Experts say we’re now in a ‘totally different era’