Omicron exposes East-West divide on living with COVID | Al Jazeera

Omicron is exposing an East-West divide between governments determined to halt the spread of the variant and those that see its spread as inevitable and even necessary.

While some Western countries are accepting the spread of Omicron as a step towards living with the virus, Asian economies are tightening borders and in-country restrictions to keep it at bay.

The diverging paths come amid a growing consensus that the variant is far less likely to cause serious illness and death than the Delta variant, despite spreading much faster than its predecessors, a characteristic that has nonetheless put pressure on hospitals and exacerbated shortages of healthcare workers.

Although many countries initially tightened their borders when the Omicron variant first emerged in November, authorities in Asia have shown little appetite for easing restrictions despite high vaccination rates and mounting evidence of Omicron’s lesser severity.