The Denmark government started vaccinations of children aged five to 11

Denmark announced it would close cinemas, theaters and concert halls and restrict restaurant opening hours over a record number of daily Covid-19 cases, accelerated by the Omicron variant.

The government also plans to close other gathering places such as amusement parks and museums.

"Theaters, cinemas and concert halls, they will have to close," Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told a news conference.

"We need to limit our activity. We all need to limit our social contacts," she added.

The measures will come into force on Sunday morning for four weeks, the government said.

This is a sharp turnaround for the Nordic country, which had lifted all restrictions on September 10, before reintroducing a corona pass at the beginning of November and then announcing a first round of restrictions last week. 

Dealing with new record numbers on a daily basis, the government has accelerated the rollout of booster doses of Covid-19 vaccines, authorized an anti-Covid pill treatment by US drugmaker Merck for serious cases and started vaccinations of children aged five to 11.

The Scandinavian country recorded a new all-time high of more than 11,000 cases in the past 24 hours, Frederiksen said.

Denmark, which sequences more samples than many other countries, is among those countries with the highest numbers of confirmed Omicron cases.