G7 health ministers are set to hold an emergency meeting today on the new Omicron Covid-19 strain spreading the globe and forcing border closures, as experts race to understand what the variant means for the fight to end the pandemic, AFP reports.

The meeting was called by G7 chair Britain, which is among a steadily growing number of countries detecting cases of the heavily mutated new strain.

“We know we are now in a race against time,” said European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen. Vaccine manufacturers needed two to three weeks “to get a full picture of the quality of the mutations”, she added.

A long list of countries has already imposed travel restrictions on southern Africa, including Pakistan, Qatar, United States, Britain, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Netherlands.