SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant

Japan this week will ease tough coronavirus border controls that have been criticized as xenophobic and damaging to the economy. The new rules, however, provide only a slight improvement: 5,000 new entrants per day, instead of the current 3,500, and nowhere near the estimated 64,000 a day that were entering for long-term visits before the pandemic.

More than 85 percent of the adult population in Turkey has been double jabbed and it is a "significant success," Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has said.

Nearly 53 million people aged 18 and above have been given two doses of the vaccine against COVID-19, according to data from the Health Ministry.

For two years, Hong Kong successfully insulated most of its residents from COVID-19 and often went months without a single locally spread case. Then the omicron variant showed up.

Hospitalizations in Turkey due to COVID-19 is in decline, the country's health minister has said, however, renewing calls on the public to get a booster shot against the virus.

"Following a noticeable drop, the number of daily cases remain at a certain level," Fahrettin Koca wrote on Twitter.

The number of new cases of coronavirus worldwide has fallen by 21 percent in the last week, the third consecutive decline in COVID-19 infections, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in its weekly report, quoted by the Associated Press.

Turkish officials are considering scrapping obligations to wear protective face masks and social distancing starting March as they expect the pandemic situation to improve by then.

If plans go ahead, people will not be required to have their masks on or observe the social distancing rules in parks and streets. The new regulation will also apply to restaurants' outdoor dining spaces.

The European Commission announced that from today in the EU it will be possible to issue COVID certificates after performing an antigen test, BTA reported.

The change will make it easier to issue documents to people whose infection has only been identified in this way.

Athens University Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases Sotiris Tsiodras, one of the PM's top advisors on COVID-19, has said that he expects a gradual return to normalcy, but that the virus's endemic presence will continue.

The pandemic situation in Turkey appears to have stabilized, an expert has said, however, warning that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 still poses risks, particularly to the unvaccinated.

The recent increase in coronavirus cases Turkey has witnessed is due to this strain, said Afşin Kayıpmaz from the Health Ministry's Science Board.

Turkey's Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has urged people to get Turkovac shots, the locally developed vaccine against COVICD-19, saying that it is already available in all 81 provinces of the county.