The omicron coronavirus variant is slowing the economic recovery, making worker shortages for already-shorthanded employers more severe and leading consumers to pull back from spending on restaurants, hotels and airlines that have been battered by two years of pandemic upheaval. Since it was first detected in southern Africa late last year, the highly contagious coronavirus variant has sparked restrictions on business activity in several countries. This week, he’s struggling to reopen even as he fears that fresh waves of infections will render his efforts futile. Yet even as pandemic fatigue deepens, there are hopes that omicron will prove to be a punishing but short-lived squall. But with the omicron variant erupting in every region, individual hospitals and clinics are on their own, according to J. Stephen Jones, chief executive of Inova, the Northern Virginia health-care system.
