South Africa's health minister said on Friday that the government believed that vaccines and high levels of prior COVID-19 infection were helping to keep disease milder in a wave driven by the Omicron variant.   

The World Health Organization issued interim recommendations for mixing and matching COVID-19 vaccines from different manufacturers for both the second dose and booster shots.

* Czech President Milos Zeman on Friday appointed Prime Minister Petr Fiala's centre-right government, shifting power to a new administration set to tackle soaring inflation and energy costs, a budget showing record deficits and a dragging COVID pandemic.

* French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday France and Germany would continue discussions in the coming days to find a compromise on whether the European Union should label nuclear and gas as green investments.

* India has detected a total of 101 cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, a health ministry official said on Friday, adding some districts were showing a rise in overall infections relative to tests.

* Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio said he had spoken with the head of Pfizer Inc to secure oral treatments for COVID-19.

* The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended Americans choose to receive one of two other authorised vaccines over Johnson & Johnson's shot, due to rare but sometimes fatal cases of blood-clotting.

* French power giant EDF said on Wednesday it had found faults on pipes in a safety system at its Civaux nuclear power station, and it would shut down another plant because it used the same kind of reactors.

* European Union governments have agreed to exercise an option to buy over 180 million doses of a version of the COVID-19 vaccine adapted for the Omicron variant developed by BioNTech and Pfizer, the head of the European Commission said.

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

* New cases in Britain hit a record high for the second day running on Thursday.

* South Africa said on Friday it would donate roughly 2 million doses of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine to other African countries.

* Malawi plans to make vaccines mandatory for front-line staff including health workers and journalists.

* Australian authorities rushed to track down hundreds who attended a Taylor Swift album party in Sydney last week that has become a super-spreading event as cases in the country hit a new pandemic high for the second straight day.

* Oil prices dipped, putting the market on track for a weekly loss, as surging cases of Omicron raised fears new curbs may hit fuel demand.

* German business morale declined for a sixth month as Europe's largest economy feels the effects of supply bottlenecks and COVID-19 restrictions.

* Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech SE have filed for full approval of their vaccine with the US Food and Drug Administration to include adolescents aged 12 to 15.

* France has detected the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus on a duck farm in southwest of the country, the farm ministry said on Friday.

Reuters