Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), called on the international community to band together and make the difficult decisions needed to terminate the COVID-19 epidemic within the next year.

Talking to the reporters in Geneva, he said, "2022 must be the year we end the pandemic."

Despite early indications that the Omicron variety is not more severe than the Delta variant, which remains the dominant strain, Tedros said Omicron has been demonstrated in early studies to have higher transmissibility and concerning vaccine resistance.

With the number of incidents increasing at an alarming rate, Tedros emphasized that it was preferable to cancel gatherings "now and celebrate later" than than "celebrate now and grieve later."

He claimed that the epidemic could be stopped, but that it would need the use of all available instruments, including vaccines, masks, and physical separation. And, perhaps most crucially, he argued, the world must address the gaping imbalance in vaccine access.

"If we are to end the pandemic in the coming year, we must end inequity."

According to health officials in the United States, the fast-spreading Omicron variation is currently the most common coronavirus strain, accounting for 73.2 percent of new cases in the preceding week for which data is available.

To curb the spread of the Omicron form and the rising instances of COVID-19 across Europe, several European Union countries have imposed internal and international travel restrictions.

According to the most recent data from Johns Hopkins University, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases globally has topped 275 million, with over 5.3 million deaths.