We are closing this blog now. Goodnight and a good New Year’s Eve from London.

Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, has announced plans to lift Covid containment measures in January that have been in place since March 2020, including reopening schools, bars and nightclubs, citing rising vaccination rates.

The country has imposed some of Africa’s toughest restrictions. In September some measures were eased, including allowing the resumption of education for universities and other post-secondary institutions.

In a televised speech late on Friday, Museveni said pre-primary, primary and secondary schools would reopen on 10 January.

Bars and nightclubs would reopen and a nighttime curfew will be lifted two weeks after schools have resumed, he added. Movie theatres and sporting events would also be allowed to reopen, he said, without giving further details.

As of Friday, Uganda had registered about 137,000 confirmed cases and nearly 3,300 deaths.

The president urged Ugandans to get vaccinated as the “first solution” to Covid.

Here is a quick recap of some of the main developments from today so far:

• The UK reported another 189,846 Covid cases in the last 24 hours and reported a further 203 deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid test. More than 1 million people have tested positive in the last seven days. The number of patients in hospital with Covid in England increased to 12,395, up from 11,452 the day before. Experts say the daily case figures do not include reinfections, and not everyone who is infected has symptoms and takes a test, suggesting the true number of infections is likely to be higher. The full story is here.
• One in 25 people in England had Covid before Christmas, including one in 15 in London, according to a new estimate from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Story here.
• The Philippines will impose tighter curbs in the capital region for the next two weeks, an acting presidential spokesperson said, to try to limit infections by the Omicron variant. The region including the capital, Manila, will be placed under the third of a five-scale alert system from 3 to 15 January. Level 3 bans face-to-face classes, contact sports, and closes funfairs and casinos. The government’s coronavirus taskforce will also reduce the operating capacity for social events, tourist attractions, amusement parks, restaurant dine-in services, fitness studios and personal care services.
• Ireland became the latest EU country to cut the isolation period for many people who contract Covid, as record infection numbers spark fears of crippling staff shortages in essential public services as well as retail and hospitality venues. Spain, Portugal and Greece reduced isolation times this week, others such as Germany and France are considering doing so, and Italy cut its quarantine for fully vaccinated people who come into contact with someone who has tested positive. The moves follow a similar decision by the US and reflect early research suggesting Omicron generally causes milder illness than earlier versions of the virus. The World Health Organization has described the decisions to cut isolation and quarantine periods as part of a delicate balancing act between controlling the transmission of the virus and keeping national economies up and running. Story here.
• Germany’s leading coronavirus expert has expressed optimism that his country could expect a “relatively normal” winter in 2022, after data from other countries firmed up the impression that infections with the Omicron variant could be milder than Delta. Story here.
• UK regulators approved Pfizer’s “life-saving” antiviral drug Paxlovid, which boasts nearly 90% success in preventing severe illness among vulnerable adults if taken soon after becoming infected with Covid. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) found the oral treatment “to be safe and effective at reducing the risk of hospitalisation and death in people with mild to moderate Covid-19 infection, who are at an increased risk of developing severe disease”. The agency said Paxlovid was most effective when taken during the early stages of a Covid infection, and recommended it was used within five days of a patient’s first symptoms. The approval is for patients aged 18 and over with at least one risk factor for developing severe illness, such as obesity or diabetes, or being over 60. Story here.
• The number of NHS hospital staff in England absent due to Covid has nearly doubled since the start of the month, new figures show. There were 24,632 staff at NHS hospital trusts ill with coronavirus or having to self-isolate on Boxing Day, up 31% from 18,829 a week earlier and nearly double the 12,508 at the start of the month.

Turkey logged 40,786 new coronavirus cases on Friday, its highest since April.

The health minister warned that the Omicron variant had become dominant as Turks celebrated New Year’s Eve without restrictions.

“Although there are no restrictions, we recommend that you act as if there are,” Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter in what he called a New Year’s “warning”.

The minister recommended that in this time of increased risk, people should avoided crowded, poorly ventilated environments.

New Covid infections have more than doubled from 18,910 a week ago.

Greece reported 40,560 Covid cases on Friday, setting a new record high for the fourth successive day following a surge of cases of the Omicron variant.

Health authorities said 76 deaths had been reported on Friday.

Greece introduced new restrictions this week, ordering bars, restaurants and nightclubs to close at midnight, with no standing customers and no music. An exception is New Year’s Eve, when establishments can close at 2am.

The country of 11 million people has reported 1,210,853 infections since the first case was detected in February 2020 and 20,790 Covid-related deaths.

Italy reported a record 144,243 Covid cases on Friday, following 126,888 the day before, the health ministry said, while the number of deaths fell slightly to 155 from 156.

Italy has officially registered 137,402 deaths linked to coronavirus since February 2020, and reported 6.125 million cases to date.

Patients in hospital with Covid – not including those in intensive care – stood at 11,150 on Friday, up from 10,866 a day earlier.

There were 119 new admissions to intensive care units, down from 134 on Thursday. The total number of intensive care patients increased to 1,260 from a previous 1,226.

A record 1.22 million tests for Covid were carried out in the last day, compared with 1.15 million the previous day, the health ministry said.

The UK has reported another 189,846 new Covid cases in the last 24 hours as over 1m people tested positive in the last seven days.

The number is likely to be on the low side thanks to widespread shortages of PCR and lateral flow tests.

The official UK Covid dashboard also recorded another 203 deaths within 28 days of a positive test.

Nearly 2,000 people were admitted to hospital.

The world is celebrating New Year’s Eve in spite of the Omicron variant spreading across the globe – and fireworks and parties are making a comeback this year after many events were cancelled in late 202.

My colleague Martin Belam is covering the celebrations in our New Year’s Eve live blog:

Portugal has reported a new daily record of 30,829 coronavirus cases, up from 28,659 the previous day, with Omicron accounting for an estimated 83% of new cases.

The health authority DGS registered 18 fatalities from Covid, up from 16 on Thursday, but that was a fraction of the more than 300 daily deaths recorded in late January when Portugal had just begun its vaccination campaign.

The number of patients in intensive care was steady at 145, well below the more than 900 in early 2021.

Portugal has one of the world’s highest Covid vaccination rates with about 87% of its 10 million population fully inoculated.

In the run-up to New Year’s Eve, the government ordered nightclubs and bars to close, required people to have negative Covid tests to enter hotels, casinos and restaurants, and limited outdoor gatherings to 10 people.

Thousands of flights in the US and internationally have been delayed or cancelled on Friday, adding to travel disruption during the holiday week owing to adverse weather and rising Covid cases, Reuters reports.

More than 2,600 flights were cancelled globally as of early Friday, including more than 1,200 flights within the US or entering or departing it, according to a running tally on the flight-tracking website FlightAware.com. There were more than 4,600 flight delays in total.

The Christmas holidays are typically a peak time for air travel, but the rapid spread of the Omicron variant has led to a sharp increase in Covid infections, forcing airlines to cancel flights as pilots and crew need to be quarantined.

On Thursday, for the second day in a row, the US had a record number of new reported cases, with more than 290,000 new infections reported each day, a Reuters tally showed.

The state of New York reported more than 74,000 new Covid cases on Thursday, from more than 336,000 tests. New York said last week it would sharply limit the number of people it allows in Times Square for its New Year’s Eve celebration. Some critics have raised concerns over the celebrations going ahead at all.

The rise in US Covid cases has caused some companies, particularly in the energy sector, to change course from earlier plans to increase the number of employees working from their offices starting next week. Chevron was to start a full return to office from 3 January but told employees this week it was postponing the plans indefinitely.

US airline cabin crew, pilots and support staff are reluctant to work overtime during the holiday travel season despite offers of hefty financial incentives. Many workers fear contracting Covid and do not welcome the prospect of dealing with unruly passengers, some airline unions have said.

In the months preceding the holidays, airlines were wooing employees to ensure solid staffing, after furloughing or laying off thousands over the past 18 months.

It’s been more than two years since China first notified the rest of the world of a new virus sweeping through its population. Since then the hunt for Covid’s origins has been mired in controversy and accompanied by political tensions.

Our China affairs correspondent Vincent Ni has taken another look at efforts to trace Sars-CoV-2’s origins:

Robert Garry, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane medical school in Louisiana, got a call from his university management telling him that agents from the FBI and CIA had requested a chat about his research into the origins of Covid-19.

Garry agreed and on 30 July three agents flew down to Louisiana to talk to him in person.

The meeting, held at a university conference room, began at 9am and ended at about 5pm. “I presented my evidence to the agents, who were properly trained scientists themselves. They asked all the right questions,” Garry told the Guardian.

“I told them: there is no way this virus could have been a manufactured weapon. There is also no evidence to suggest it was a lab leak. But I’m also conscious there are people out there who will always disagree.”

Their conversation came two months after Joe Biden ordered US intelligence to investigate how the pandemic began.

In normal circumstances, investigating an emerging infectious disease outbreak is a purely scientific inquiry, as was the case with Sars in 2003 and with Mers a decade later. But the search for the origin of the Covid pandemic has come in the middle of a global controversy that has mixed public health, domestic politics and international diplomacy.

The Philippines will impose tighter curbs in the capital region for the next two weeks, the acting presidential spokesperson said on Friday, to try to limit infections by the Omicron variant.

The health ministry on Friday recorded 2,961 new coronavirus infections, a two-month high, and reported a positivity rate of 10.3%.

“In the coming days, we might see an increase in active cases,” acting presidential spokesperson Karlo Nograles said in a televised announcement.

The region including the capital Manila is an urban sprawl of 16 cities that is home to more than 13 million people. It will be placed under the third of a five-scale alert system from 3 to 15 January, Nograles said.

Level 3 bans face-to-face classes, contact sports, funfairs, and casinos. The government’s coronavirus task force will also reduce the operating capacity for social events, tourist attractions, amusement parks, restaurant dine-in services, fitness studios, and personal care services.

With roughly 2.84 million total confirmed cases and 51,504 casualties, the Philippines has the second highest number of Covid cases and deaths in southeast Asia, after Indonesia.

The Philippines has so far detected 10 Omicron cases, three of which three were domestic infections and the rest were from overseas travellers. The country’s genome sequencing capacity is limited.

“It is prudent to assume that Omicron is already in circulation, or is already in the community,” the health secretary, Francisco Duque, said at a news conference on Friday.