COVID updates: New Zealand imposes restrictions amid omicron outbreak

In San Francisco, COVID-19 cases are "dropping rapidly" following record highs that appeared to peak on Jan. 9, officials announced.

While "cases are still extremely high," they "have plateaued and are starting to go down," said Dr. Grant Colfax, director of the Department of Public Health.

"We're looking at data from other places … the consistent data seem to show that cases go up very fast, they started to come down very fast. So we're on that downward trend now," Colfax said.

Austria's parliament voted Thursday to mandate vaccinations for all adults, making Austria the first country in Europe to mandate the vaccine for all eligible residents.

According to the Austrian Health Ministry, 72% of the country's population is fully vaccinated.

The COVID-19 Vaccination Act will go into effect on Feb. 1. Beginning March 15, reminder letters will be sent to those who remain unvaccinated. Noncompliance can result in a fine.

Exempt from the new law are: minors, pregnant women, those who had COVID-19 within 180 days and people with medical exemptions.

-ABC News' Christine Theodorou

Beginning Feb. 2, masks will no longer be required outdoors in France and public establishments will no longer have to apply quotas for receiving the public, Prime Minister Jean Castex announced Thursday. 

Working from home will be recommended but won't be mandatory as of Feb. 2, he said.

Beginning Feb. 16, nightclubs will reopen and standing consumption in bars will resume. 

Some epidemiologists have suggested a peak in cases has been reached. But the prime minister warned that in a normal year the flu generates 10,000 hospitalizations in the winter, while omicron is causing 10,000 hospitalizations every five days. 

Beginning Monday, the vaccine pass will come into force and will apply to everyone 16 and older. 

-ABC News' Ibtissem Guenfoud

The National Institutes of Health's COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel is discouraging the use of monoclonal antibody treatments from Regeneron and Eli Lilly in its updated guidance Wednesday, as both have shown to be less effective against the predominant omicron variant.

Sotrovimab, from Vir Biotechnology and GlaxoSmithKline, is the only monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID-19 that has so far been shown to hold up against omicron. Last week, the federal government bought 600,000 more doses of the treatment, bringing the total to approximately 1 million, but supplies remain short while production ramps up.

Federal health officials had announced last month they would pause shipments of the treatments from Eli Lilly and Regeneron due to omicron efficacy concerns.

Monoclonal antibody therapy is recommended for nonhospitalized COVID-19 patients who are at high risk of getting severely ill.

-ABC News' Sasha Pezenik