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.