The head of the World Health Organisation has urged countries to work together to bring the acute phase of the pandemic to an end, saying that they now have all the tools available to do so.

“The Covid-19 pandemic is now entering its third year and we are at a critical juncture,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a press conference alongside Germany's development minister Svenja Schulze.

“We must work together to bring the acute phase of this pandemic to an end. We cannot let it continue to drag on, lurching between panic and neglect.”

India's Covid-19 infections, led by the Omicron variant, may see a sharp rise in the coming weeks, some top experts have said, noting that the variant was already in community transmission and hospitals were seeing more patients despite a decline in cases in major cities.

India reported 306,064 new infections over the last 24 hours, the health ministry said, about an eight per cent decline from the average daily cases reported in the last four days. Deaths were 439, the lowest in five days.

“Omicron is now in community transmission in India and has become dominant in multiple metros,” a report by the Indian SarsS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium said.

“The number of cases in cities like Mumbai and Pune are the tip of the iceberg,” Dr Subhash Salunke, a member of the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research and the national taskforce on Covid, told Reuters, adding that the deadly Delta variant from the previous wave was also circulating.

Pakistan has logged 7,195 new infections in the last 24 hours, marking the second straight day that infections have exceeded 7,000, along with eight more deaths.

The positivity rate is 12.5 per cent.

The total number of cases has risen to 1,374,800 and the death toll is 29,105.

The breakdown in the last 24 hours is as follows:

• Sindh: 3,125 cases, 3 deaths
• Punjab: 2,108 cases, 3 deaths
• KP: 885 cases, 1 death
• Balochistan: 31 cases
• Islamabad: 856 cases
• GB: 8 cases
• AJK: 182 cases, 1 death

Another 833 people have recovered from the coronavirus in Pakistan, taking the country's total to 1,269,078.

According to the government's Covid-19 database, the number of active cases has crossed 75,000, while the number of Covid-19 patients in critical care stands at 1,113. .

Hong Kong will take steps from Tuesday to cut the number of civil servants working in their offices, as it battles a spate of Covid-19 infections in the run-up to the busy Lunar New Year holiday, Reuters reports.

Daily cases hit an 18-month high of 140 in the last 24 hours, as a weekend surge in infections linked to a congested public housing estate sent authorities in the Asian financial hub scrambling to rein in the virus.

Some employees will "work from home as much as possible", the government has said in a statement, adding that individual departments might temporarily cut back on some public services as a result.

Australia has recorded another surge of Covid-19 deaths in the last 24 hours as an outbreak of the highly contagious Omicron variant peaked, and authorities warned numbers could rise further when schools return from end-of-year holidays next week.

The country is trying to strike a balance between reopening after two years of movement restrictions and coping with the highest numbers of deaths and cases of the pandemic.

Authorities say a rollout of a vaccine booster will reduce deaths, and point to a stabilisation in hospitalisation numbers as a sign the flare-up has reached its worst.

Read more from Reuters here.

The Karachi city administration has imposed micro-smart lockdowns in parts of the metropolis, particularly in Central district, amid an increase in cases of the Omicron variant.

District Central Deputy Commissioner Taha Saleem issued a notification imposing micro-smart lockdowns in several union councils in Gulberg, North Nazimabad, North Karachi and Liaquatabad.

According to the notification, smart lockdowns will be enforced at streets and houses within the specified areas for two weeks starting from January 22 till Feb 5. During the lockdown, the movement of people will be restricted in the hotspot areas.

The curbs are being imposed on the recommendations of the district health officer. According to the DC’s directives, hotspots have emerged with the spread of Covid-19 in various areas of Central district, “which may lead to a potential public health emergency".