By Gina Lee

Investing.com – Gold was up on Tuesday morning in Asia, with investors turning to the safe-haven asset as rising numbers of COVID-19 cases globally led to some countries tightening restrictive measures short of a lockdown. However, rising U.S. Treasury yields and interest rate hikes bets kept the yellow metal’s gains small.

By 11:09PM ET (09:09 GMT), the jumped 0.18%, to $1.803.45 Normally, the inversely moves to gold on Tuesday morning. The benchmark 10-year Treasury yields reached a record high of more than one month during the last session.

While the global number of COVID-19 infections continues to increase, Reuters data shows that the omicron variant may be less virulent then Delta. Omicron, however, is more easily transmissible. This has resulted in preventive measures like thousands of U.S. school students avoiding returning to their classrooms and switching to online learning. Many banks encourage employees to work remotely for several weeks.

On Monday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted approval for booster shots to children between 12 and 15. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also reduced the time period for eligibility for booster shots to five months, from six.

Monetary policies are also on investors’ radars, with the minutes from the latest U.S. Federal Reserve meeting due on Wednesday. In 2022, the Fed will likely raise interest rates multiple times.

The Asia Pacific data from China released earlier this day revealed that in December the results were better than predicted.

Other precious metals: Silver and platinum rose 0.3%, while palladium rose 1.1%.