Skopje, 7 January 2022 (MIA) – North Macedonia has registered a total of 8,209 active COVID-19 cases nationwide, up by over 1,300 in the past 24 hours alone. On Thursday, 1,725 new infections were registered after 7,472 tests were conducted in the past 24 hours. In the same time period, two people died and 332 people were registered as having recovered, the Ministry of Health said. Skopje registered 1,028 new confirmed COVID-19 cases out of the 1,725. Since the onset of the epidemic, North Macedonia has performed a total of 1,633,936 tests, recording 230,265 COVID-19 cases and 214,054 recoveries. The death toll has reached 8,002. As the number of Covid cases surges around the world, World Health Organization officials has said that the heavily-mutated Omicron variant causes less risky course of the illness than the globally dominated Delta, but warned that it shouldn’t be defined as being “mild”. Experts also warned that Omicron will not be the last COVID-19 variant as it will keep on mutating. According to WHO data, the number of cases up to Jan. 2 rose by 71 percent compared to the previous week, registered at 9,5 million, while the number of fatalities dropped by 10 percent, to 41,000.