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A man has a swab taken at a drive-through COVID-19 testing clinic at Bondi Beach in Sydney on Dec 21, 2021. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File - 

Australia’s most populous state reported a record number of new COVID-19 cases on Sunday and a sharp jump in hospitalisations while thousands of people were isolating at home after contracting the virus or coming into contact with someone who has.

New South Wales reported 6,394 new infections, up from 6,288 a day earlier. Case numbers in the state have surged over the past two weeks but hospitalisations have lagged behind new infections.

More than 70 per cent of cases in some Australian states are the Omicron variant of the coronavirus but New South Wales does not routinely carry out genome testing to identify the variant. State Health Minister Brad Hazzard indicated Sunday (Dec 26) that Omicron is widespread.

“We would expect that pretty well everybody in New South Wales at some point will get Omicron,” Hazzard said. “If we’re all going to get Omicron, the best way to face it is when we have full vaccinations including our booster.”

Health officials reported 458 active cases in hospitals across the state, up sharply from 388 the day before. There were 52 people in intensive care in New South Wales.

Victoria, the country's second most populous state, reported 1,608 new COVID-19 cases and two deaths on Sunday, with 374 people in hospitals, including 77 in intensive care.

More than 30,000 people in Victoria spent Christmas isolating at home, unable to celebrate with family or friends. Of those, about half were reported to be active cases who contracted the virus in the days leading up to Christmas.

Doctors and pharmacists in New South Wales have said they are running short of vaccine doses amid a rush for shots spurred by concern over the omicron variant//CNA

File photo. Motorists navigate downtown Grass Valley, California's roadways during an early morning snowfall, on Dec Funez/The Union via AP) - 

Parts of California are getting a White Christmas after all, with snowfall pounding mountains across the state.

Other areas of California, however, saw a wet and rainy Christmas as storms continue to drench the state, causing flash flooding and evacuations in some areas over the holiday period.

A 113km stretch of interstate over the top of the Sierra Nevada was closed Saturday when a storm that dropped nearly 60cm of snow on some ski resorts around Lake Tahoe overnight got a second wind.

Interstate 80 connecting Reno, Nevada, to Sacramento, California, over the Sierra was closed in both directions due to poor visibility from the Nevada-California state line to Colfax, California.

“The worst part of the storm is here so expect long delays,” the California Highway Patrol in Truckee tweeted Saturday afternoon.

Friday night into Saturday, 50cm of snow fell at Homewood on Tahoe’s west shore. About 30cm was reported at Northstar near Truckee, California and 25cm at the Mount Rose ski resort on the southwest edge of Reno.

At Donner Pass in the Sierra, which is along the closed interstate, officials with the University of California, Berkeley's Central Sierra Snow Laboratory wondered on Twitter if the recent snowfall could break the snowiest December record of 4.6m set in 1970.

There has been at least 3m recorded so far this month, according to The Mercury News, with more expected over the next 72 hours.

The snowpack in the Sierra was at dangerously low levels after recent weeks of dry weather but the state Department of Water Resources reported on Christmas Eve that the snowpack was between 114 per cent and 137 per cent of normal across the range with more snow expected.

In the San Bernardino National Forest, crews are working on a US$4.2 million emergency project to repair a section of State Route 18 that washed down a hillside late Thursday after heavy rain, according to The San Bernardino Sun.

The roadway is a major route to Big Bear Lake and the closure near Panorama Point could be “several days if not weeks,” the newspaper reported.

The Los Angeles area is likely to see rain and mountain snow for the next week, according to the National Weather Service, with temperatures significantly below normal through the middle of the week.

The San Diego region should see scattered showers, with heavy snow in the San Bernardino and Riverside County mountains, with precipitation possibly going into Thursday.

Meanwhile, the San Francisco Bay Area is predicted to have rain showers through Monday before cold and drier conditions arrive through the middle of next week, the weather service said.

The storms across the West, which could drop rain and snow over much of the region into next week and plunge the Pacific Northwest into a lengthy cold snap, follow a now-departed atmospheric river that delivered copious amounts of precipitation earlier this week.

The National Weather Service says the Seattle-Tacoma area is likely to see up to 7.6cm of snow over the weekend. By early next week, the Seattle area will dip as low as -7.7 degrees Celsius, the lowest in several years. Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, will drop to -20 degrees Celsius by Wednesday and Portland will drop to the low 20s and high teens.

Rain and snow records broke in Nevada and state officials in Oregon declared an emergency ahead of the freezing temperatures, snow and ice.

Recent forecasts show at least an inch of snow is likely to fall Sunday in the Seattle and Portland regions, which don’t typically see snow.

But forecasters and state officials say the main concern is cold temperatures in the region, with daytime highs next week struggling to reach above freezing, that are likely to impact people experiencing homelessness and those without adequate access to heating.

In Arizona, a winter weather advisory remained in effect Saturday through the weekend in the upper elevations of the mountains north of the Grand Canyon near the Colorado line. But the wet weather that dumped record-breaking rain on Phoenix and Flagstaff on Friday was moving out of the area.

The 4.2cm of rain that fell at the airport in Flagstaff on Friday shattered the old record of 2.2cm set in 2019. The 2.5cm that was recorded in Phoenix Friday broke the old record of 2.4cm in 1944.

It also was the wettest day for the city since Feb 22, 2020, when just over an inch fell//CNA

A flooded area in Itamaraju, in the south of Bahia State, Brazil, after heavy rains. (File photo: Brazilian Presidency/AFP/Isac Nobrega) - 

More than 11,000 people have been displaced in the Brazilian state of Bahia due to flooding, with authorities scrambling Saturday (Dec 25) to provide relief to residents without alternate housing.

The heavy rains have killed 17 people since November, including the latest death on Thursday, the state's civil protection agency said.

A total of 4,185 people were seeking shelter, according to data released by the agency on Friday, after the rains struck 19 cities particularly hard, including Guaratinga, Itororo and Coaraci in the state's south.

The agency reported that a total of 11,260 people had been forced to flee their homes.

The Bahia and federal governments mounted a joint operation on Saturday, in collaboration with other states, to mobilise personnel, aircraft and equipment, as well as provide relief to residents in the flooded areas.

"We are fully mobilised, taking all measures to ensure the necessary support to the victims of the heavy rains that hit Bahia this Christmas," the state's governor, Rui Costa, said in a video message.

Flooding and traffic blocks were reported on 17 roads, with some caused by landslides and rockslides, the state's infrastructure secretary reported.

December rainfall in Bahia's capital Salvador totalled 250mm through Friday, a figure five times the historic average, city officials said//CNA

Wall street Journal - 

The world's economic output will exceed US$100 trillion for the first time next year and it will take China a little longer than previously thought to overtake the United States as the number one economy, a report showed on Sunday (Dec 26).

British consultancy Cebr predicted China will become the world's top economy in dollar terms in 2030, two years later than forecast in last year's World Economic League Table report.India looks set to overtake France next year and then Britain in 2023 to regain its place as the world's sixth biggest economy, Cebr said.

"The important issue for the 2020s is how the world economies cope with inflation, which has now reached 6.8 per cent in the U.S.," said Cebr deputy chairman Douglas McWilliams.

"We hope that a relatively modest adjustment to the tiller will bring the non-transitory elements under control. If not, then the world will need to brace itself for a recession in 2023 or 2024."

The report showed Germany was on track to overtake Japan in terms of economic output in 2033. Russia could become a Top 10 economy by 2036 and Indonesia looks on track for ninth place in 2034//CNA