In Europe, where the spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus led to 7.4 million new reported cases of COVID-19 this past week, Dr. Hans Kluge, regional director of the World Health Organization Europe, made a startling announcement on Tuesday. Given the “new West to East tidal wave” across the continent, his agency believes that more than half of Europeans could “be infected in the next six to eight weeks.”
Even before Kluge’s dire warning, however, harsh COVID restrictions were going into effect in Europe. On Monday, for example, Italians awoke to a new reality: Unless they are fully vaccinated against COVID or recently recovered, they can no longer