U.S. lawmakers are discussing another possible round of Covid-19 stimulus spending for businesses, seeking to blunt the impact of the fast-spreading Omicron variant, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

       Early efforts by Democratic and Republican lawmakers have focused primarily on authorizing billions of dollars to help businesses including restaurants, performance venues, gyms and minor league sports teams, the report said, citing four people familiar with the matter.

       The White House declined to comment to the Washington Post, as did two lawmakers cited as behind the talks.

       Such a measure, if passed by Congress and signed into law by U.S. President Joe Biden, would be the latest federal relief package as the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic enters its third year, this time as the Omicron variant sweeps the country.

       Biden, a Democrat, approved the $1.9 trillion "American Rescue Plan" in March 2021.

       Former Republican U.S. President Donald Trump approved nearly $900 billion in coronvirus-related funding into law in December 2020 as part of a larger $2.3 trillion pandemic aid and spending package.

       President Joe Biden urged concern but not alarm as the United States set records for daily reported Covid-19 cases and his administration struggled to ease concerns about testing shortages, school closures and other disruptions caused by the omicron variant.

       The president emphasized that vaccines, booster shots and therapeutic drugs have lessened the danger for the overwhelming majority of Americans who are fully vaccinated.

       The World Health Organization said a coronavirus variant found in France hasn’t become much of a threat since it was first identified in November.

       The variant “has been on our radar,” Abdi Mahamud, a WHO incident manager on Covid, said at a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday. “That virus had a lot of chances to pick up.”

       Meanwhile, Hong Kong on Wednesday reimposed some of its toughest Covid-19 restrictions, banning flights from eight countries including India until January 21, in a bid to arrest the rising number of Omicron cases.

       In remarks Tuesday before a meeting with his Covid-19 respon ..

       Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor announced that travellers from eight countries—Australia, Canada, France, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, the UK and the US, including via transit—are banned from returning to the city for two weeks starting Saturday, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.

       Hong Kong is reimposing some of its toughest Covid-19 restrictions across the board covering social activities and international travel, setting a 6-PM curfew on all dine-in services and banning flights from eight countries as it braces for a fifth wave of infections amid Omicron fears, the Post report said.

       Hong Kong, a major aviation hub and financial centre, is a Special Administrative Region of China.

       Lam said that the tougher rules were necessary with the city on the verge of a wider coronavirus outbreak following the community detection of an unlinked Omicron case.

       “There has been rapid change in the pandemic situation which has caused us to be worried. We will announce today fast, decisive and precise measures to cut the transmission chains,” Lam told reporters at a press conference.

       The two-week ban on passenger flights will be effective until January 21.

       Travellers who were recently in those countries or had transited through them will be barred from returning to the city for two weeks.

       She said that the measures were vital for preventing imported cases—especially infections carrying the highly transmissive Omicron variant—from spreading further in the community and to prevent public hospitals from being overloaded with Covid-19 patients.

       Lam said she hoped affected businesses would understand the “decisive, swift and sharp” action taken to curtail the virus.

       “We will take bold and stringent measures so that within a very short period of time we can contain the Omicron variant,” she said.

       Leading microbiologist Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, declaring that a fifth Covid-19 wave was “technically” underway, said that a number of untraced cases were appearing in the community with health officials still scrambling to pin down their origin.

       Fellow government adviser Professor Gabriel Leung, dean of the University of Hong Kong's faculty of medicine, estimated that it would take at least three to six months to fully control the epidemic if there was a community outbreak.

       “If so, the plan to open the border will once again fail,” he said, amid a pending scheme to resume quarantine-free travel with mainland China.

       On Wednesday, Hong Kong reported 38 Covid-19 cases, pushing the official tally to 12,799, with 213 related deaths, the Post report said.

       (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)