(VOVWORLD) - As of Tuesday, there have been 262.3 million COVID-19 cases and 5.2 million deaths in the world, according to worldometers.info.
The US remains the hardest-hit country with more than 53,700 new infections and 312 deaths in the past 24 hours.
President Joe Biden said the US is ready to deal with the Omicron variant, and promised to speed up vaccine reasearch and development if necessary. Washington has imposed travel bans on tourists from 8 African countries to prevent the spread of the new variant.
Travellers to Cuba from South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Malawi, and Mozambique have to submit vaccine certificates, get PCR test three times with negative results, and quarantine for 7 days.
Chile has imposed a travel ban beginning next month on travellers from 6 African countries.