Covid: European governments must urgently boost monitoring, WHO says

Waiting for the autumn will be too late,' says regional director as Omicron variants drive threefold surge in cases over past six weeks

The World Health Organization has called on European governments to urgently reinforce rather than reduce Covid-19 monitoring, warning of a potentially difficult winter as a new wave of infections sweeps across the continent.

Hans Kluge, the WHO's regional director for Europe, said it was now abundantly clear" that the region faced a surge driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variants BA.2 and BA.5 and that it would intensify further as indoor mixing increased in the autumn.