The Palestinian health ministry said on Thursday that it had identified the first cases of the COVID-19 Omicron variant in territory under its jurisdiction in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Three cases were detected, and all were individuals who had recently returned to the West Bank from abroad, health ministry spokesman Kamal Al-Shakhrah said in a statement.
The new wave of infections worldwide comes just weeks before the second anniversary of the emergence of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China. Since then more than 5 million people have died of COVID-19 globally and more than 272 million cases have been reported.
Meanwhile, more than 8.5 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered to combat the disease - an effort that is now challenged by the Omicron variant's outburst.
