Recapping WHO's response since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Director-General of WHO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press briefing that he's "highly concerned that Omicron being more transmissible, circulating at the same time as Delta -- is leading to a tsunami of cases."

"This is and will continue to put immense pressure on exhausted health workers and health systems on the brink of collapse and again disrupting lives and livelihoods," he said, citing the pressure as not only new COVID-19 patients requiring hospitalization but also a large number of health workers getting sick themselves.

Tedros reiterated his concern over a recent narrative that Omicron has been causing milder or less severe diseases.

"But we are undermining the other side at the same time -- it could be dangerous... we shouldn't undermine the bad news just focusing on the good news," he said.

"We don't want people to be complacent, saying this is not severe, this is mild. And we have to be very careful in that narrative," he said.

According to Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's Health Emergencies Program, though Omicron looks like being more transmissible, having a shorter incubation period, and causing a mild disease, it's based on the largely young population that the variant has been infecting.

Since the Omicron wave has not been fully established in the broader population, Ryan said he's "a little nervous to make positive predictions until we see how well the vaccine protection is going to work in those older and more vulnerable populations."

"I think it's really important over the coming weeks that we keep suppressing transmission of both variants to the minimum that we can," he added.

Under the campaign, called "2021 Clean Internet", police officers strengthened the fight against online crimes, including those on infringing personal information, hacking computer systems and spreading pornographic information, according to the Beijing Public Security Bureau.

People who aided and abetted the offenses, such as offering technological services and sharing payment tools, also needed to be punished, the bureau added.

During the campaign, 69 people suspected of using the internet to make and broadcast pornographic content were captured, while 66 others were detained for allegedly using software to obtain illegal profits by scalping online registrations of hospitals across the capital.

The police also cleaned up 4.08 million pieces of illegal and harmful information in the campaign, with shutdown of 190,000 online accounts and administrative punishment given to involved internet enterprises more than 2,700 times.

Sun Liming, deputy director of the Zhejiang Provincial Health Commission, told a news conference Zhejiang has been working around the clock to meet the target of "keeping the epidemic within the province and reducing the number of infections to zero" through all-around management and control measures and smart governance.

Zhejiang reported 50 new cases on Thursday, bringing the total number of COVID-19 cases in the latest outbreak to 343. Shaoxing, the hardest-hit city in Zhejiang, reported 45 new cases on Thursday, with three new cases in Hangzhou, the provincial capital, and two in Ningbo.

The risk level for COVID-19 in five areas in Shaoxing's Shangyu district was raised to the highest level on Wednesday.

Among the five high-risk areas, the Datong Supermarket has reported a cluster of over 50 cases, with nearly 40 percent of the patients over 60 years old. In Ningbo, around half of those infected have been over 60.

"This may have something to do with senior people's relatively low capabilities in using new technologies such as smartphones and electronic payment systems," Wu Anhua, chief expert at the Infection Control Center of Xiangya Hospital Central South University, told Health Times. "Many of them still prefer to use cash when shopping, which might also pose difficulties for epidemiological tracing after the outbreak occurred."

Wu said checking health codes and measuring body temperatures should be mandatory for those who enter places such as fresh food supermarkets and shopping centers.

Zhang Jianmin, chief physician at Tongde Hospital in Hangzhou, said on Thursday that residents who are still in closed-loop management should pay close attention to their physical health, cooperate with doctors if they have any symptoms, frequently communicate with family and friends through social networks, and call the official hotline to seek psychological counseling if necessary.

Carlito Galvez, the chief implementer of the government's measures to combat COVID-19, thanked the Chinese government for the donation.

"Majority of these vaccines will be distributed to far-flung areas," Galvez told reporters at the airport in Manila, adding many Filipinos are considering taking the Chinese vaccine as a booster shot.

China's Ambassador to the Philippines Huang Xilian expressed hope that the newly delivered COVID-19 vaccines will contribute to "healthy, safe" year-end holidays in the Philippines and boost the country's national vaccination program and recovery from the pandemic.

"Some countries might be interested in vaccine diplomacy, but China has been doing just everything we can to help in the spirit of Bayanihan (a Tagalog word which means the spirit of communal cooperation) and in the spirit of a fine tradition of supporting each other," he told reporters.

"We will continue to do our best to help until the final victory against the pandemic," Huang added.

The Chinese envoy said the economic cooperation between China and the Philippines boomed this year. "All this is contributing to the country's economic recovery. We are happy to see that our cooperation has become the driving force of the economic recovery in this country," Huang added.

China has sustained its COVID-19 vaccine supply to the Philippines since the first delivery on Feb 28, allowing the country to kick off its vaccination drive on March 1.

The Philippines has administered more than 97 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines as of Monday. Nearly 38 million people have been fully vaccinated.

To date, the Philippines has received more than 158.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from different vaccine makers, with China being its biggest vaccine supplier.

The Philippines has so far reported more than 2.8 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, including more than 50,000 deaths.

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