The spread of the Omicron variant is pushing Covid-19 towards being an endemic disease that humanity can live with, although it remains a pandemic for now, the EU's drug watchdog said.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) also expressed doubts about giving a fourth vaccine shot to the general population, saying repeated boosters were not a “sustainable” strategy.

“Nobody knows exactly when we will be at the end of the tunnel but we will be there,” Marco Cavaleri, head of vaccine strategy at the Amsterdam-based regulator, told journalists.