The World Economic Forum is again delaying its much-ballyhooed annual meeting of world leaders, business executives and other elites in Davos, Switzerland, amid new uncertainties about the omicron variant of the coronavirus.

The forum, which repeatedly delayed, moved and finally canceled last year's event, says the previously planned Jan. 17-21 gathering in the alpine town will now take place in "early summer" — without giving specifics.

Through the COVAX program, the United States on Sunday delivered a donation of 336,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine to Lebanon to support the continued fight against the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

As a single dose vaccine, this J&J donation can fully inoculate 336,000 Lebanese against Covid-19, the U.S. embassy said in a statement.

Yes, pets and other animals can get the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, but health officials say the risk of them spreading it to people is low.

Dogs, cats, ferrets, rabbits, otters, hyenas and white-tailed deer are among the animals that have tested positive, in most cases after contracting it from infected people.

Travel restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus are hammering the already beleaguered travel and tourism industries and adding to the gloom in Europe in the midst of the crucial holiday season.

Travelers are rearranging or canceling trips because of tightening rules. Eurostar, which operates trains across the English Channel, sold out of tickets to France on Friday before new travel restrictions to and from Britain went into effect.

Some former vaccine skeptics in Eastern Europe have shifted over to the other side as coronavirus infections surge, countries are making it more difficult for the unvaccinated to travel abroad and authorities battle against government distrust and vaccine disinformation.

When she rolled up her sleeve in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo to take her first COVID-19 vaccine dose, Fata Keco was afraid of possible adverse side effects. But she said the worst she had to contend with over the next few days was "moderately discomforting pain" in her left arm around the site of the injection.

The lightning spread of Omicron in Europe and elsewhere added a sense of urgency to an EU summit on Thursday, with leaders struggling to present a united, bloc-wide approach.

The EU health agency ECDC on Wednesday warned that vaccinations alone would not stop the rise of the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus, and said "strong action" was urgently needed.

Germany vowed Wednesday to "defend itself" against radicalized anti-vaccination groups after police launched raids in response to death threats against a top politician backing decisive measures to fight the pandemic.

Pfizer said Tuesday that its experimental pill to treat COVID-19 appears effective against the omicron variant.

The company also said full results of its 2,250-person study confirmed the pill's promising early results against the virus: The drug reduced combined hospitalizations and deaths by about 89% among high-risk adults when taken shortly after initial COVID-19 symptoms.

The omicron variant appears to cause less severe disease than previous versions of the coronavirus, and the Pfizer vaccine seems to offer less defense against infection from it but still good protection from hospitalization, according to an analysis of data from South Africa, where the new variant is driving a surge in infections.

While the findings released Tuesday are preliminary and have not been peer-reviewed — the gold standard in scientific research — they line up with other early data about omicron's behavior, including that it seems to be more easily transmitted.