Kuwait recorded its first case of Omicron virus after conducting a second PCR test on an European traveler who came to Kuwait from one of the African countries. The traveler had received two doses of approved COVID-19 vaccine and the traveler has been in quarantine since his arrival to Kuwait in accordance with the protocol of the Ministry of Health as per global requirements.

The European traveler had entered Kuwait with negative PCR test certificate. On arrival a PCR test was conducted for which the report was shown negative. Few days later the second PCR test result showed positive, reports Al Qabas. The sources stated that the European traveler did not have contact with anyone and his health condition is stable and symptoms are mild. He was immediately quarantined in an institute. 

 The sources also demanded that this examination be expanded to include other African countries, even those that have not yet announced the appearance of the mutant, in order to prevent any cases from entering them, reports Al Anba. The health requirements are the same, there has been no change in them, which includes wearing a mask, maintaining distance, washing hands, and taking the initiative to take the vaccination, in order to protect your health and the health of others.

The airport authorities have intensified their health procedures towards all arrivals to the country, stating that “It is inevitable that all health requirements be emphasized for them.” The source stressed that the airport’s authorities are in constant contact with the health authorities, saying: “No new instructions were received in this regard until yesterday evening”/AT

Kuwait has detected its first case of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, state news agency KUNA reported on Wednesday.

The variant was detected in a European traveller who arrived in Kuwait from an African country where the variant had been detected, KUNA reported, citing the health ministry's spokesman. (Reuters)

Major US stock indexes closed higher Wednesday. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 35 points, or 0.1%, to 35,754.

The S&P 500 added 14 points, or 0.31%, to 4,701.

The Nasdaq soared 100 points, or 0.64%, to 15,787.

Despite climbing above the critical 30 level twice last week, the VIX volatility index, known as the fear index, fell 9.1% to 19.90.

The dollar index was down 0.48% to 95.91, while the yield on 10-year US Treasury notes gained 3.14% to 1.526%.

Precious metals were down slightly, with gold losing 0.04% to $1,783 an ounce and silver falling 0.3% to $22.44.

Crude prices were up around 0.8%, with Brent crude trading at $76.05 per barrel and US benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude at $72.65./aa

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) on Wednesday urged governments to follow advice from the World Health Organization and immediately rescind travel bans introduced since the emergence of the coronavirus omicron variant.

“There is some evidence that omicron causes milder disease than delta, but again, it’s still too early to be definitive,” WHO chief Tedros Ghebreyesus said in a news webinar.

He urged people to avoid complacency about the omicron variant because it “will cost lives.”

“Many of those who don’t die could be left battling long COVID, or post-COVID condition, a disease with debilitating, lingering symptoms that we are only beginning to understand,” he said.

Tedros said emerging data from South Africa suggest an increased risk of reinfection with omicron but more information is needed to draw firmer conclusions.

He thanked Botswana and South Africa for rapidly detecting, sequencing, and reporting the variant.

“It is deeply concerning to me that those countries are now being penalized by others for doing the right thing,” he said.

Tedros urged all countries to take rational and proportional measures in line with international health regulations.

'Omicron induced instant amnesia'

Willie Walsh, director general of IATA, said the world knows a lot about the virus after nearly two years, including the inability of travel restrictions to control its spread.

“But the discovery of the omicron variant induced instant amnesia on governments, who implemented knee-jerk restrictions in complete contravention of advice from the WHO, the global expert,” he said.

He said public health organizations, including the WHO, advised against travel curbs as measures to contain the spread of omicron after it was first detected in southern Africa.

“Blanket travel bans will not prevent the international spread, and they place a heavy burden on lives and livelihoods,” said Walsh, citing WHO advice.

“In addition, they can adversely impact global health efforts during a pandemic by disincentivizing countries to report and share epidemiological and sequencing data.”

The IATA chief said all countries should ensure that measures are regularly reviewed and updated when new evidence becomes available about omicron or any other variants of concern.

“Despite this clear commitment, very few governments have addressed early overreactions to omicron,” he said.

With the European Center for Diseases Control already signaling that a de-escalation of measures will likely be needed in the coming weeks, governments need to urgently act on the commitments they made to the International Civil Aviation Organization, he stressed./aa

Dozens of Muslim congressional staff members sent an open letter Wednesday to the US House of Representatives leadership, demanding consequences for Islamophobic comments made by a Republican member.

The letter denounced comments by Lauren Boebert from the state of Colorado, who was seen on video at a public event joking that Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar joined her on an elevator at the Capitol building, and left Boebert thinking: "'Well, she doesn't have a backpack. We should be fine,'" a reference to terrorism. She then referred to Omar as part of the "jihad squad.”

The comments outraged Omar, a Democratic from the state of Minnesota, and other Muslims. Omar said the story was not true.

Sixty-two Muslim staff members in the House and Senate, along with nearly 400 allied staff, signed the letter which decried "hateful rhetoric by public officials (which) puts our safety at risk, both at the workplace and in our everyday lives."

"Witnessing unchecked harassment of one of only three Muslim members of Congress - and the only visible Muslim member - we feel that our workplace is neither safe nor welcome," it said.

The back-and-forth about Boebert's comments has gotten increasingly contentious.

"This buffoon looks down when she sees me at the Capitol. Sad she thinks this bigotry gets her clout," Omar tweeted after the comments were made public last month.

Boebert released a statement on her congressional Twitter account saying, "I apologize to anyone in the Muslim community I offended with my comment about Rep. Omar," and added that there were "plenty of policy differences to focus on without this unnecessary distraction."

She said she would also be calling Omar personally, but Omar said in the call, Boebert did not give a direct apology and "doubled down on her rhetoric and I decided to end the unproductive call."

Since then, Omar said she has received hateful, threatening messages. She and other Democrats have called on Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy to strip Boebert of her congressional committee assignments. But McCarthy said he is satisfied with Boebert's apology.

The letter demanded that Congress "reject this incendiary rhetoric that endangers the physical, mental and emotional well-being of staff across both sides of the aisle."

Omar said she is confident that Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will take steps to rebuke Boebert for her comments./agencies

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Wednesday that Canada will employ a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics.

Canada joins the UK, US and Australia who have all said that they are not sending diplomats to the Winter Games, which begin Feb. 4

Trudeau, who was joined by Canada’s foreign and sports ministers at a news conference, said China should have expected the boycott because of its dismal human rights record.

"This should not be a surprise," Trudeau told reporters, based on our "concerns for human rights violations."

He specifically mentioned the Two Michaels -- Spavor and Kovrig, who were imprisoned for more than two years in China in a move widely seen as retribution for Canada's arrest of senior Huawei executive Ming Wanzhou.

Their release came hours after Ming was set free.

"We will not be sending diplomatic representatives" to the Games, said Trudeau, but Canadian athletes will participate.

He said the decision was made after consultation with Canada's allies.

“For the past many, many months we’ve been talking about our approach with allies around the world. We know that on issues like this it’s important to make sure that we are working with our allies,” he said earlier Wednesday before the news conference.

The US announced a boycott Monday, with White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki telling reporters that Washington has a "fundamental commitment to promoting human rights."

China has repeatedly denied human rights violations and Foreign Minister Zhao Lijian said the boycott is a "violation of the political neutrality of sports established by the Olympic Charter and runs counter to the Olympic motto 'more united.'"/aa

Access to COVID-19 vaccines around the globe has been “shockingly unequal,” the UN human rights chief said on Wednesday.

By Dec. 1, barely 8% of adults had received one vaccine dose in low-income countries, compared to 65% in high-income countries, according to Michelle Bachelet.

“The pandemic has killed at least 5 million people and thrown every state and community into turmoil,” she said at a seminar on access to medicines and vaccines organized by the UN Human Rights Council.

“The people most affected are those who suffer systemic discrimination and pervasive inequalities – both within nations and among them.”

Citing UN chief Antonio Guterres’ observations, she said worldwide access to COVID-19 vaccines has been “profoundly unjust and immoral” and counterproductive.

“New spikes of infections, and the recent detection of the omicron variant, are a concrete demonstration of the dangers of vaccine inequity,” said Bachelet.

“New variants such as omicron are far more likely to emerge among largely unvaccinated populations – and they pose a threat to everyone.”

She stressed that the lack of universal and equitable access and distribution of vaccines is prolonging the pandemic, reiterating that “none of us is safe until all of us are safe.”

“This pandemic is a major global crisis, and it requires a united, global response,” said Bachelet.

She said vaccines had made it possible for the World Health Organization and other partners to draw up an effective and affordable initiative to protect the world, referring to the COVAX facility.

“We have been profoundly fortunate that medical research has so swiftly developed vaccines and medications that effectively prevent the most severe forms of COVID-19,” she said.

“But currently, it seems very unlikely that the WHO COVID-19 vaccination target of protecting 40% of the world’s population by the end of 2021 will be met. The target of 70% by mid-2022 is also threatened.”

Apart from the grave health issues, the “human rights impact of our global failure to vaccinate widely enough is profound,” according to the UN official.

“It is driving sharply divergent economic recoveries from the first waves of the pandemic. This heightens the risks that developing countries will not fall further behind – but be pushed further behind,” she said.

These setbacks threaten all of humanity, harming people, and economies, and could “lead to growing tensions and conflict.” ​​​​​​​

“Neglect of global vaccination is a threat to us all,” said Bachelet, reaffirming the need for COVID-19 vaccines to be viewed as “a global public good.”/aa

The new Omicron variant of the coronavirus has been detected in 57 countries so far, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.

"Even if the severity is equal or potentially even lower than for delta variant, it is expected that hospitalizations will increase if more people become infected and that there will be a time lag between an increase in the incidence of cases and an increase in the incidence of deaths," the WHO said in its weekly epidemiological report.

The report said more data is needed to assess whether the omicron variant may result in reduced protection from vaccines.

"Vaccine effectiveness studies are vital to understand how vaccines protect against infection, symptomatic and severe disease, and death," it added.

Omicron is the fifth SARS-CoV-2 variant designated as a Variant of Concern by WHO, following the alpha, beta, gamma and delta variants.

Omicron variant first identified on Nov. 9

WHO said the first known laboratory-confirmed case of omicron was identified from a specimen collected on Nov. 9 in South Africa, with the variant first reported on Nov. 24.

Globally, weekly case incidence plateaued in the week of Nov. 29 to Dec. 5, with over 4 million confirmed new cases.

"New weekly deaths increased by 10% as compared to the previous week, with over 52,500 new deaths reported," said WHO, noting that the over 5.2 million deaths have been reported globally from the coronavirus.

The European region covering 53 nations reported the highest weekly case incidence per 100,000 population with 288.0 new cases per 100,000 population, and the Region of the Americas with 91.4 new cases per 100,000 population followed.

Both regions also reported the highest weekly incidence in deaths of 3.1 per 100,000 population for Europe and 1.3 for the Americas.

The highest numbers of reported new deaths continued from Russia, with 8,523 new fatalities or 5.8 new deaths per 100,000. Ukraine with 3,163 further deaths and Poland with 2,636 recent fatalities followed.

In South Africa, WHO said the number of reported COVID-19 cases doubled the week before Dec. 5 to more than 62,000.

In South Africa's neighboring countries of Eswatini, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia and Lesotho, there were “very large” incidences in COVID-19./agencies

Scientists in Japan have developed masks that “can trace coronavirus” after being exposed to ultraviolet light (UV).

A team of scientists at Kyoto Prefectural University in western Japan developed the masks using antibodies extracted from ostrich eggs, Kyodo News reported on Wednesday.

Led by the university president, Yasuhiro Tsukamoto, 52, the team believes the masks “will offer users an easy way to test whether they have contracted the virus.”

“A coronavirus sample glows on a face mask filter under an ultraviolet light after being sprayed with a fluorescent dye containing antibodies,” the report said.

The team developed a special filter that is placed inside the face mask.

“The filter can be taken out and sprayed with a fluorescent dye containing the coronavirus antibodies from the ostrich eggs. If the virus is present, the filter will glow when shone under ultraviolet light,” it added.

Experiments were done for 10 days with 32 people infected with the coronavirus. In all cases, the scientists found that “all the masks they wore glowed under the UV light, which faded as time went by and their viral load decreased.”

If all goes well with the ongoing testing, the team hopes to gain approval from Japanese authorities to sell the masks next year.

Last February, the researchers had injected “an inactive and non-threatening form of the coronavirus into female ostriches.”

The experiment was successful since a huge quantity of antibodies were extracted from the ostriches' eggs.

“Ostriches are capable of producing several different kinds of antibody, or proteins that neutralize foreign entities in the body,” the report said.

“We can mass-produce antibodies from ostriches at a low cost. In the future, I want to make this into an easy testing kit that anyone can use,” Tsukamoto said.​​​​​​​/aa

At least Spanish 80 healthcare workers tested positive for COVID-19 after attending a hospital Christmas party in the city of Malaga, officials confirmed on Tuesday.

All 80 are asymptomatic or have only mild cases, but the hospital is struggling to replace the confined workers, local media reported.

Union representatives said that on Oct. 31, local health authorities fired 1,500 healthcare workers because they assumed the pandemic was coming to an end.

"If that wasn't the case, we'd have enough personnel to substitute our colleagues who can't work," Juan Carlos Navas, a union representative for Malaga nurses, told local media.

A Christmas party that is suspected to be behind the outbreak was organized by the hospital's critical care department. More than 170 people attended, but had taken antigen tests beforehand and followed all COVID precautions, according to union representatives.

The Malaga outbreak is piquing fears of a possible case surge over the holiday season.

Over the last two weeks, the infection rate nationwide has nearly doubled and reached almost 250 cases per 100,000 people.

This surge in infections coincides with both colder weather and the increased indoor social contact during the holidays.

Unvaccinated children are at the center of Spain's sixth wave, with an infection rate of 412.

The country's Health Ministry has asked citizens to limit the number of people in festive events and to take precautions, though officials have so far ruled out implementing more restrictions.

For the most part, life in Spain has returned to normal although masks remain ubiquitous and several parts of the country now require vaccine passports for certain activities.

Spain's current infection rate is almost the same as it was last December, but the number of hospitalizations are now much lower.

On Dec. 9, 2020, nearly 12,200 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized and 2,179 people in intensive care. Almost a year later, hospitals are treating 4,262 COVID-19 patients and 814 people are in intensive care.

Close to 90% of people older than 12 in Spain are fully vaccinated. Children aged five to 11 will start getting their jabs in mid-December./aa