BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union needs daily reviews of its travel restrictions and rapid deployment of vaccine booster doses to limit entry and protect its citizens from the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, the European Commission said on Wednesday.
Europe is experiencing a surge of COVID-19 cases and a growing number of infections by the Omicron variant that the World Health Organization has labelled a variant of concern and that has concerned scientists due to its multiple mutations.
“We are no facing a double challenge in the fight against COVID-19,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a tweet. “The rapid resurgence of Delta across Europe and a new variant of concern: Omicron.”
(Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop and Marine Strauss)