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GENEVA (Reuters) - The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) voiced concern on Tuesday that some countries were introducing blanket measures against the Omicron coronavirus variant that may not be necessary and penalised African nations unfairly.

The head of drugmaker Moderna said COVID-19 vaccines are unlikely to be as effective against the Omicron variant of the coronavirus as they have been previously, sparking fresh worry in financial markets about the trajectory of the pandemic.

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France has registered 47,177 new confirmed COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, health ministry data showed on Tuesday, the highest one-day tally since early April at the height of the third wave of the pandemic.

South Africa's Aspen Pharmacare took a step towards a licensing deal to package and sell Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine in Africa, announcing on Tuesday it had signed non-binding terms with subsidiaries of the U.S. drugmaker.

The World Health Organization warned countries on Tuesday not to impose blanket travel bans over the new Omicron coronavirus variant as governments and scientists tried to figure how much protection current vaccines would offer against the strain.

Governments around the world are urgently scouring databases for recent cases of COVID-19 infections, screening travellers and decoding the viral genomes of the new variant as they try to measure how far it has spread.

It is too early to know whether Omicron variant of COVID-19 will lead to severe disease, but preliminary information from South Africa indicates it does not result in unusual symptoms, top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said on Tuesday.

Slovenia said on Tuesday it may ban Johnson & Johnson's Janssen COVID-19 vaccine except when people request it, after concluding a young woman's death was linked to the shot.

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