COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 21 December

Dec 21, 2021

Pastor David Shrimpton, 57, known as the "flying padre" puts on a protective face mask with his Santa Claus costume before speaking to young students about Christmas at School of the Air in Broken Hill, Australia, December 8, 2021. Since 2003 Shrimpton has been flying to some of Australia's most isolated communities to talk and listen to a scattered flock. That largely stopped last year when Australia introduced some of the world's strictest COVID-19 restrictions. Now, Shrimpton is taking to the skies again. "It will be great to go out again and reconnect with these folk, reconnect with the kids and be part of their school life once again, reconnect with the adults who are living remotely and, let them know that they're not forgotten," he told Reuters. REUTERS/Loren Elliott SEARCH "ELLIOTT FLYING PASTOR" FOR THIS STORY. SEARCH "WIDER IMAGE" FOR ALL STORIES. TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

As the holiday season approaches the rapid spread of Omicron is ushering in new COVID-19 restrictions. Image: REUTERS/Loren Elliott

Simon Torkington

Senior Writer, Forum Agenda

Our Impact

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how COVID-19 is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

COVID-19

Listen to the article

Have you read?

Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people in selected countries. Image: Our World in Data

Discover

What is the Forum doing about keeping workers well?

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

The Agenda Weekly

A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda

Subscribe today

You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. For more details, review our privacy policy.

More on COVID-19
See all

Here’s what to know about the new COVID-19 Pirola variant

Lora du Moulin and Charlotte Edmond

October 11, 2023

How the cost of living crisis affects young people around the world

Douglas Broom

August 8, 2023

From smallpox to COVID: the medical inventions that have seen off infectious diseases over the past century

Andrea Willige

May 11, 2023

COVID-19 is no longer a global health emergency. Here's what it means

Simon Nicholas Williams

May 9, 2023

New research shows the significant health harms of the pandemic

Philip Clarke, Jack Pollard and Mara Violato

April 17, 2023

Candida auris: What you need to know about the deadly fungus spreading through US hospitals

Rebecca A. Drummond

April 11, 2023