The measures taken by US President Joe Biden to backstop hospitals and distribute coronavirus test kits, are too little, too late to curb a surge of Omicron-related coronavirus cases over Christmas and New Year's, health experts warned.

Blanket vaccine booster programs are likely to prolong the COVID-19 pandemic, as inequity in access to jabs could lead to more mutated variants that drag out the crisis, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) warns.

Oil prices increased on Wednesday over worries about tight supply and a drawdown in US inventories, in spite of concerns about the possible hit to economic activity from the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant.

Britain's economic recovery from pandemic fallout slowed more sharply than previously thought in the third quarter even before the arrival of the Omicron variant, official data showed Wednesday.

The red-hot Omicron variant is threatening to worsen an already dangerous surge of cases in the US.

US President Joe Biden warned that the Omicron variant of the coronavirus is going to spread more rapidly in the country and a winter of “severe illness and death” awaits the unvaccinated.

Omicron multiplies itself 70 times more quickly in tissues that line airway passages, which may facilitate person-to-person spread, researchers say.