BERNE - Swiss people have voted to keep coronavirus vaccine-passes and other restrictions after some 60 percent of them said Yes in a referendum on Sunday.

Just under two-thirds of Swiss nationals have been vaccinated, while infections are growing by some 50 percent a day.

The referendum came amid a wave of recent anti-vax protests in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK, as Europe imposed its latest wave of lockdowns.

Nations around the world sought Monday to keep the new omicron variant at bay with travel bans and further restrictions, even as it remains unclear what it means for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Japan announced it would suspend entry of all foreign visitors, while new cases of the variant identified days ago by researchers in South Africa appeared as far apart as Hong Kong, Australia and Portugal. Portuguese authorities were investigating whether some of the infections there could be among the first reported cases of local transmission of the variant outside of southern Africa.

The stream of new cases showed the near impossibility of keeping the genie in the bottle in a globalized world of travel and open borders.

Despite the global worry, scientists cautioned that it’s still unclear whether omicron is more alarming than other versions of a virus that has killed more than 5 million people. And in some parts of the world, authorities were moving in the opposite direction.