World Economic Forum postpones Davos ahead of Omicron | Business and Economic News

The World Economic Forum has postponed its annual Davos meeting for the second year in a row.

The World Economic Forum postponed its annual meeting in Davos next month, frustrated for the second year by new waves of coronavirus in Switzerland and around the world.

With the meeting scheduled for January 17-21, the Forum said in a statement that it had been forced to reconsider the “ongoing uncertainties” over the Omicron variant and now plans to hold the meeting in early summer.

“The current pandemic conditions make it very difficult to hold a global personal meeting,” he said. “Despite strict meeting health protocols, Omicron’s transmission and its impact on travel and mobility have made the delay necessary.”

Like last week, WEF officials were confident that the conference could be organized, that Switzerland was open for international travel, and that regular tests would be conducted.

But the emergence of the rapidly expanding Omicron threatened those plans.

Switzerland tightened restrictions from Monday to reduce infections and protect the health care system. He re-established the requirement to work from home and excluded the uninsulated from much of public life.

With a population of about 8.5 million, Switzerland has reported about 160,000 coronavirus cases this month. The government has called on the armed forces to help hospitals provide patient care, transportation and vaccinations.

The situation means that for the second year in a row, the WEF has defeated the WEF’s ability to organize a meeting of executives, bankers, academics and political leaders in the Swiss Alps for five decades.

In ordinary times, about 3,000 people would go to combine discussions and cocktails, and many more would join in.

The last time they met in January 2020, the world began to tune in to the dangers posed by COVID-19. A few weeks later, a large part of the world economy was blocked.

Jamie Dimon JPMorgan Chase & Co. the chief executive, a regular at Davos, joked in February 2020 that “he has this nightmare, somehow in Davos, we all got to go there, and then we all got away and spread it. The only good news for that is that maybe he just killed the elite.”

Expecting to return to Davos in January 2021, the WEF announced plans to hold this year’s annual meeting in Lucerne, Switzerland, and then Singapore. The virus meant that neither of them had happened.