The Omicron coronavirus variant threatens to fuel soaring inflation in the United States by further pressuring supply chains and worsening worker shortages, Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank President Loretta Mester told the Financial Times. “If it turns out to be a bad variant it could exacerbate the upward price pressures we’ve seen from the supply-chain problems,” Mester told the paper in an interview on Thursday. “The fear of the virus is still one of the factors holding people back from re-entering the labour force,” Mester said, adding that there was a risk that if the new variant were more virulent than Delta the people who have lost or quit their jobs during the pandemic would continue to stay at home. Earlier this week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said that the U.S. central bank needs to be ready to respond to the possibility that inflation may not recede in the second …