Stock markets in Asia closed Monday with mixed figures, as a number of high-profile central banks, including the US Federal Reserve, will hold their monetary policy meetings this week.

Developments regarding the omicron variant and China’s real estate companies remain on the agenda in the continent.

The Asia Dow, which includes blue-chip companies in the region, lost 5.9 points, or 0.16%, to close at around 3,770 points.

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 stock exchange was up 202.7 points, or 0.71%, to 28,640.

The Hang Seng, the benchmark for blue-chip stocks trading on the Hong Kong stock exchange, decreased 41.1 points, or 0.17%, to 23,954.

China's Shanghai stock exchange rose by 14.73 points, or 0.40%, to 3,681 points, and the Indian Sensex benchmark dropped 459.8 points, or 0.78%, to close at 58,326 points.

Meanwhile, the Singapore index lost 10.95 points, or 0.35%, to 3,124./aa

Oil prices increased on Monday with concerns eased over the impact of the new COVID-19 omicron variant on the global economic recovery and fuel demand.

International benchmark Brent crude was trading at $75.97 per barrel at 0723 GMT for a 1.09% increase after closing the previous session at $75.15 a barrel.

American benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) was at $72.39 per barrel at the same time for a 1% gain after trade ended at $71.67 a barrel in the previous session.

Prices continued rising over relief that the omicron variant is so far showing only mild symptoms and scaling back new restrictions.

Ozlem Tureci, one of BioNTech's two Turkish-German co-founders, told a news conference on Dec. 8 that preliminary laboratory studies demonstrated that three doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine neutralized the omicron variant of the coronavirus.

As countries announce plans to roll out vaccine boosters with daily infections approaching an all-time high, South African scientists see no sign that the new variant is causing more severe illness.

Moreover, Richard Mihigo, the coordinator for immunization and vaccines development in the South African regional office of the World Health Organization (WHO), noted that few of the many people infected with omicron in South Africa have had to be hospitalized. He said from the preliminary analysis it looks as if the new variant may cause less severe illness, but at least another two or three weeks are needed to determine omicron's full effects.

However, the WHO said Sunday that early data suggests that omicron is more transmissible than the delta strain, reduces vaccine efficacy but causes less severe symptoms.

'While preliminary findings from South Africa suggest it may be less severe than delta, and all cases reported in the EU/EEA to date have been mild or asymptomatic, it remains unclear to what extent omicron may be inherently less virulent,' the WHO said.

Oil markets remains cautious, however, as the US Department of Energy said on Friday it would sell 18 million barrels of crude oil from its strategic petroleum reserve on Dec. 17, as part of a previous plan to reduce gasoline prices.

Markets are also closely watching developments before the next meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, known as OPEC+, on Jan. 4.

Iraq's oil minister said Sunday he expects a continuation of the group's current monthly production policy of gradually increasing output by 400,000 barrels per day.

The US oil rig count, an indicator of short-term production in the country, rose last week, according to the latest data released by oilfield services company Baker Hughes on Friday.

The number of oil rigs increased by 4 to 471 for the week ending Nov. 10 from 467 the previous week. On an annual basis, the oil rig count rose by 213 this year./aa

As search and rescue efforts remain underway in Mayfield, Kentucky in the aftermath of a powerful tornado, residents of the city who lost their homes and businesses are struggling to recover from the devastating disaster.

From Friday night into Saturday, at least 30 tornadoes ripped through six states, including Kentucky, Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas, leaving more than 100 people dead.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Wayne Flant said he was running a restaurant in Mayfield with his wife, which he said had lots of customers before the disaster.

"As you can see, we're not gonna have none for a while," he said.

He said he was worried about people with no power and no water.

"They can't go get a motel room. They don't have family here. I don't know what they’ll do, and that's the part that kills me.

"We need help. There's a lot of people here with nowhere to go," he added.

Daren Stewart, who has been living in Kentucky for 30 years, called ground zero of the powerful tornado in the western part of the state a "disaster.”

"I'm doing my best to try to help the community the best I can. That's what we're doing here," said Stewart.

Shyheim McCampbell, another Mayfield resident, said the city was not prepared for the deadly tornado.

"Everything's gone. Mayfield's dead, and we're just trying to bring it back to life," he said. "It's gonna be hard. It's gonna take some time, but we can do it."

"We need help…not only just reparation help, but we need help stabilizing the citizens of this city because we don't know what's next. We see our homes and our families' homes gone," McCampbell said.

Kendra Patocki, who works for a disaster recovery team called SERVPRO, came to Mayfield from Michigan to help authorities Sunday and said she was hopeful of getting the city back on the road to recovery.

Patocki said she has been to many storm sites before, but this one was "pretty devastating" for her.

Thousands of people in Mayfield are facing housing, water and power shortages, and earlier in the day, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear asked the federal government to declare a "major disaster" in the state.

The Biden administration declared a federal emergency in Kentucky on Saturday./aa

The novel omicron variant of coronavirus is spreading faster than the delta variant and seems to be reducing vaccine efficacy according to preliminary data, the World Health Organization said Sunday.

Omicron had spread to 63 countries as of Dec. 9, the WHO said in an update on the variant, with faster transmission observed in South Africa, where delta is less prevalent, and in the UK, where delta is dominant.

“Based on currently limited evidence, omicron appears to have a growth advantage over delta,” the WHO said.

Omicron is likely to outpace delta where there is community transmission of the COVID-19 variant, according to the world health body.

It said that whether omicron’s observed rapid growth rate in countries with high levels of population immunity is related to immune evasion, intrinsic increased transmissibility, or a combination of both remains uncertain.

Less severe symptoms, low vaccine efficacy

It said there are still limited data on the clinical severity of omicron.

“While preliminary findings from South Africa suggest it may be less severe than delta, and all cases reported in the EU/EEA to date have been mild or asymptomatic, it remains unclear to what extent omicron may be inherently less virulent,” said the WHO.

There have been limited available data and no peer-reviewed evidence on vaccine efficacy so far for omicron.

“Preliminary evidence, and the considerably altered antigenic profile of the omicron spike protein, suggests a reduction in vaccine efficacy against infection and transmission associated with omicron,” said the health body.

“In addition, preliminary evidence from a few studies of limited sample size has shown that sera obtained from vaccinated and previously infected individuals had lower neutralization activity than with any other circulating variants of concern of SARS-CoV-2 and the ancestral strain.”/aa