WHO: COVID triples across Europe, hospitalizations double

LONDON (AP) — The World Health Organization says coronavirus cases have tripled across Europe in the past six weeks, accounting for nearly half of all infections globally. Hospitalization rates have also doubled, although intensive care admissions have remained low. In a statement on Tuesday, WHO’s Europe director said super-infectious relatives of the omicron variant were driving new waves of disease and that repeat infections could potentially lead to long COVID. Earlier this week, editors of two British medical journals said the country’s National Health Service has never before had so many parts of the system so close to collapsing. They slammed the government’s insistence that vaccines have broken the link between infections and hospitalizations.