By Gina Lee

Investing.com – Gold was up on Friday morning in Asia, with the dollar weakening as Santa gifted a “risk-on” rally ahead of the holidays.

By 10:15 pm ET (03:15 GMT), the climbed 0.1% to $1.810.10, remaining at or above the $1.800 mark. On Friday, the, which is normally inversely related to gold moved down.

Receding fears of the omicron COVID-19 variant’s impact on the economic recovery boosted investors’ risk appetites, capping gains for the yellow metal.

Molnupiravir received an emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Merck & Co . Inc.’s (NYSE) COVID-19 tablet, Thursday.

The U.K. also found that Omicron infections were less likely to result in hospitalization. However, the study did note that this variant could still cause serious complications due to its infectiousness.

In Asia Pacific, however, a laboratory study showed that two doses and a booster of Sinovac Biotech Ltd.’s vaccine did not produce sufficient levels of neutralizing antibodies to protect against omicron.

China locked down Xian Thursday, to stem the COVID-19 epidemic in this western Chinese city. With the city’s 13 million residents told to remain in their homes and to designate one person to go out every other day for necessities, it is the biggest lockdown since the pandemic’s start in early 2020.

Elsewhere in the region, data released earlier in the day showed that Japan’s grew 0.5% year-on-year in November. The country’s cabinet also approved a for the year starting in April 2022. For the year ending March 2023, Japan plans JPY107.6 trillion yen ($941.26 billion) in overall spending, a 0.9% increase from the current year’s initial budget, according to the finance ministry.