Denmark and Norway rush in stricter Covid measures as cases soar

Scandinavian countries say Omicron is spreading rapidly and expect record number of daily infections

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Denmark and Norway have announced stricter Covid measures to battle soaring infection numbers, as authorities said the new Omicron variant was spreading fast and would probably become dominant in several EU countries within weeks or even days.

Amid a varied continental picture that includes sharply declining case numbers in many countries, the two Scandinavian governments said they expected daily infections would soon exceed all previous records as the highly transmissible variant combined with and fuelled a wave still largely driven by the previous Delta mutation.