WHO official praises strict virus policy

'Nowhere near over'

COVID-19 had infected over 323 million people and killed 5.5 million worldwide as of Sunday, the WHO said on Tuesday. It reported 18 million new cases last week, a 20 percent jump from the previous week. New deaths totaled 45,000, close to the figure in the previous week.

The agency warned on Tuesday that the pandemic is far from over, as France, Germany and Brazil posted record numbers of infections.

The Omicron strain has spread unabated around the world, pushing some governments to impose fresh measures while speeding up the rollout of vaccine booster shots.

"This pandemic is nowhere near over," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva.

Europe is at the epicenter of alarming new outbreaks, with Germany's cases soaring past 100,000 and France reporting nearly half a million cases on Tuesday.

Tedros warned against dismissing Omicron as mild, as the dominant strain continues to flare up in new outbreaks from Latin America to East Asia after it was first detected in southern Africa in November.

"Omicron may be less severe, on average, but the narrative that it is a mild disease is misleading," he said.

Europe reported 5 million cases last week and the WHO has predicted that Omicron could infect half of all Europeans by March, filling hospitals across the continent.

Germany on Tuesday reported 112,323 coronavirus cases and 239 deaths, officials said, with Omicron found in more than 70 percent of the infections.

Other European countries are also battling soaring Omicron rates, with France recently averaging around 300,000 cases daily.

Hopes for Europe's tourism recovery remain bleak, with the World Tourism Organization saying on Tuesday that foreign arrivals will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2024 at the earliest, despite a rise of 19 percent last year compared with 2020.

Agencies and Cui Haipei in Beijing contributed to this story.