The different paths taken by major central banks underline deep uncertainties about how the fast-spreading Omicron variant will hit the global economy and their differing views on an inflation surge that is landing hard in the US and the UK, but less so in Europe and less again in Japan.

While the risk of uncontrolled prices has taken precedent for the Fed and the Bank of England (BoE), ECB President Christine Lagarde emphasized in a news conference that the pandemic was again depressing spending in the eurozone and threatening growth.

"To cope with the current pandemic wave some countries have introduced tighter containment measures [...] This could delay the recovery [...] The pandemic is weighing on consumer and business confidence," Lagarde said.

In that environment, "we need to maintain flexibility and optionality" by withdrawing support "step by step", but not committing to a full exit from pandemic support programs, she added.

The Fed, by contrast, committed on Wednesday to end its pandemic bond-buying by March and laid out an accelerated timetable for interest rate increases.

Fed chair Jerome Powell said the US was heading in 2022 toward strong growth and full employment — a far-off prospect for most European labor markets — and that the Fed needed to treat inflation as the more pressing risk.

BoE policymakers raised the benchmark Bank Rate on Thursday to 0.25 percent from 0.1 percent, confounding economists' expectations that it would stay on hold. The BoE said inflation was set to hit 6 percent in April, three times the BoE's target level.

"The Committee continues to judge that there are two-sided risks around the inflation outlook in the medium term, but that some modest tightening of monetary policy over the forecast period is likely to be necessary to meet the 2 percent inflation target sustainably," the British central bank said.

British daily coronavirus infections are at their highest since the earliest days of the pandemic, forcing Prime Minister Boris Johnson this week to impose new restrictions.

A first read-out of the UK Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) for December on Thursday showed Omicron had already hit British hospitality and travel firms — a day after data showed consumer price inflation at a decade-high.

The ECB, which has undershot its inflation target for most of the past decade, kept interest rates on hold and announced the end of its pandemic emergency asset-buying scheme next March.

But the Eurozone central bank also promised copious support as needed via its long-running Asset Purchase Program, confirmed its more relaxed view on inflation, and signaled that any exit from years of ultra-easy policy will be slow.

While those measures were supported by a majority at the ECB meeting, there were tensions with several policymakers warning the bank was underestimating inflation risks.

In Asia, the Bank of Japan kept monetary policy ultra-loose at its meeting on Friday but dialed back emergency pandemic-funding.

With consumer-level inflation remaining largely absent, Japan is widely expected to reduce economic relief at a much slower pace than many other nations.

Norway's central bank, which had hiked in September on the back of an economic rebound, went ahead with a further rise as expected and said more were likely to follow.

Earlier on Thursday, the Swiss National Bank kept its ultra-loose stance in place with a policy rate locked in at -0.75 percent. Swiss inflation — while rising — is still seen much lower than elsewhere at just 1 percent next year, slowing to 0.6 percent in 2023.

"The SNB is maintaining its expansionary monetary policy," it said in a statement. "It is thus ensuring price stability and supporting the Swiss economy in its recovery from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic."