The World Health Organization approved two new Covid-19 treatments yesterday, growing the arsenal of tools along with vaccines to stave off severe illness and death from the virus.

The news comes as Omicron cases fill hospitals around the world with the WHO predicting half of Europe will be infected by March.

In their recommendation in British medical Journal the BMJ, WHO experts said arthritis drug baricitinib used with corticosteroids to treat severe or critical Covid patients led to better survival rates and reduced need for ventilators.

Experts also recommended synthetic antibody treatment Sotrovimab for people with non-serious Covid at highest risk of hospitalisation, such as the elderly, people with immunodeficiencies or chronic diseases such as diabetes.

Sotrovimab's benefits for people not at risk of hospitalisation were deemed insignificant and the WHO said its effectiveness against new variants like Omicron was "still uncertain".

Only three other treatments for Covid-19 have received WHO approval, starting with corticosteroids for severely ill patients in September 2020.

Corticosteroids are inexpensive and widely available and fight inflammation that commonly accompanies severe cases.

The coronavirus has killed at least 5,540,918 people worldwide since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources yesterday.

China suspended dozens of international flights yesterday amid a global surge in Omicron cases, while the city of Shanghai curbed tourist activity as it rushed to head off local Covid-19 infections as imported cases rose.

Hong Kong authorities said the city's airport will suspend operations of transit flights from around 150 countries and territories considered high risk because of the coronavirus for a month, deepening the global financial hub's isolation, reports Reuters.

Schools in the Philippine capital Manila were ordered yesterday to suspend online classes for a week, as an Omicron-driven record surge in infections ravages the metropolis of 13 million.

US President Joe Biden on Thursday said he would send more military health workers to hospitals in six states.

He also promised to provide free masks and more free tests to help Americans tackle the fast-spreading Omicron variant.

British researchers, meanwhile, said young children and babies are proportionally more likely to be hospitalised with Omicron compared to older children than with previous variants but the cases are still mild, adding the overall picture was reassuring.