Two vaccine makers said their shots protected against the Omicron coronavirus variant as UK data suggested it may cause proportionally fewer hospital cases than the Delta strain, though public health experts warned the battle against COVID-19 was far from over.
Similar encouraging evidence about hospitalisation rates had emerged from South Africa on Wednesday, but the head of Africa's main public health agency joined the World Health Organization in cautioning that it was too soon to draw broad conclusions about Omicron's virulence.
"Let's be careful not to extrapolate what we are seeing in South Africa across the continent, or across the world," Africa Centres for Disease Control (CDC) chief John Nkengasong told a media briefing.
Coronavirus infections have soared across much of the world as highly infectious Omicron has spread, triggering new restrictions in many countries.
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