The highly transmissible Omicron strain has spread unabated around the world, pushing some governments to impose fresh measures while speeding up the rollout of vaccine booster shots.

“This pandemic is nowhere near over,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters Tuesday from the agency’s headquarters in Geneva.

Europe is at the epicentre of alarming new outbreaks, with Germany’s cases soaring past 100,000 and France reporting nearly half a million cases on Tuesday.

The UN health chief warned against dismissing Omicron as mild, as the dominant Covid strain continues to flare new outbreaks from Latin America to East Asia after it was first detected in southern Africa in November.

“Omicron may be less severe, on average, but the narrative that it is a mild disease is misleading,” he said.

Macron is among 50,000 politicians, journalists, and human rights activists around the world said to have been identified as ‘people of interest’ by clients of Israeli firm NSO, developer of a surveillance system called Pegasus.

President Imran Khan of Pakistan and President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa as well as World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. are also among potential targets found on a list of numbers leaked to Amnesty and the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories.

The Paris prosecutor’s office is investigating suspected widespread use of Pegasus spyware and an official in the president’s office said: ‘If this is proven, it is clearly very serious.’

Investigator Laurent Richard said on French TV: ‘We found these numbers but we obviously couldn’t do a technical analysis of Emmanuel Macron’s phone to determine if it had been infected with a spying device.’

Last night the NSO Group denied that it had ever maintained ‘a list of potential, past or existing targets’.

‘The unprecedented revelation… should send a chill down the spine of world leaders,’ Amnesty’s secretary general, Agnes Callamard, said in a statement.

Three current prime ministers and the king of Morocco, Mohammed VI, are also on the list, The Washington Post reported.

The Post said none of the heads of state would offer their smartphones for forensic testing that might have detected whether they were infected by NSO’s military-grade Pegasus spyware. Thirty-seven phones identified in the investigation were either breached or shows signs of attempted infection, it has reported.

The Post and 16 other members of a global media consortium were granted access to the leaked list. Another member, the French daily Le Monde, determined that 15 members of the French government may have been among potential targets with Macron in 2019.

The Paris prosecutor’s office is investigating the suspected widespread use of NSO’s military-grade Pegasus spyware to target journalists, human rights activists, and politicians in multiple countries.

Also Sunday, Amnesty released a forensic analysis of the alleged targeting that showed Amazon Web Services was hosting NSO infrastructure.

In response, Amazon said it shut down NSO accounts that were ‘confirmed to be supporting the reported hacking activity.’ Amazon said the accounts had violated its terms of use.

Another U.S. company identified by Amnesty as hosting NSO servers was DigitalOcean. When contacted by The Associated Press, DigitalOcean neither confirmed nor denied whether it had identified or cut off such servers, the report said.

‘All of the infrastructure outlined in the Amnesty report is no longer on DigitalOcean,’ it said Tuesday, without elaborating, in an emailed statement.

The drug trial was suspended on grounds of safety concern following a report published by Lancet, which revealed that more people are dying from the use of hydroxychloroquine to combat COVID-19.

WHO Director General Tedros AdhanomTedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “As you know, more than two months ago we initiated the Solidarity Trial, to evaluate the safety and efficacy of four drugs and drug combinations against COVID-19. On Friday, the Lancet published an observational study on hydroxycholoroquine and chloraquine and its effects on COVID-19 patients that have been hospitalised. The authors reported that among patients receiving the drug, when used alone or with a macrolide, they estimated a higher mortality rate. The Executive Group of the Solidarity Trial, representing 10 of the participating countries, met on Saturday and has agreed to review a comprehensive analysis and critical appraisal of all evidence available globally.
“The review will consider data collected so far in the Solidarity Trial and in particular robust randomised available data, to adequately evaluate the potential benefits and harms from this drug. The Executive Group has implemented a temporary pause of the hydroxychloroquine arm within the Solidarity Trial while the safety data is reviewed by the Data Safety Monitoring Board. The other arms of the trial are continuing. This concern relates to the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloraquine in COVID-19. I wish to reiterate that these drugs are accepted as generally safe for use in patients with autoimmune diseases or malaria. WHO will provide further updates as we know more. And we will continue to work night and day for solutions, science and solidarity.”

Four million jobs have been furloughed in the UK alone, over 3 million people in the US have become unemployed while countries in Africa have been plunged even into more economics misery as the Coronavirus pandemic has affected small and large scale enterprises.

Switzerland will allow some businesses to reopen today, while Italy plans to loosen some measures on May 4 but the WHO has warned such countries that the pandemic isn’t over.

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “The pandemic is far from over. We continue to be concerned about the increasing trends in Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America and some Asian countries. As in all regions, cases and deaths are underreported in many countries in these regions, because of low testing capacity. This virus will not be defeated if we are not united, if we are not united, the virus will exploit the cracks between us and continue to create havoc. Lives will be lost,”

During a virtual press conference on Wednesday night April 22, Mr. Tedros said: ‘Most countries are still in the early stages of their epidemics and some that were affected early in the pandemic are starting to see a resurgence of cases. Make no mistake: we have a long way to go. This virus will be with us for a long time.”

He noted there has been progress in western Europe but said there were ‘worrying upward trends’ in early epidemics in part of Africa and central and South America.