Asia's deaths surpass 1.0m

Asia passed the grim milestone of 1 million coronavirus-linked deaths on Friday, a Reuters tally showed, as a spike in omicron variant infections spreads across the region after starting in nations such as Japan and South Korea, report agencies.

The death toll in Asia, home to more than half the world's population, reached 1,000,045, contributing 16 per cent of global deaths related to COVID-19, the tally showed.

New cases remain at record or near-record levels in Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam, but have fallen sharply from their peaks in India, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Even mainland China, which has adopted a "dynamic zero" strategy of strict measures to curb infections, has been severely tested by fast-spreading omicron.

Deaths have soared to records in the East Asian countries of Japan and South Korea and the financial hub of Hong Kong.

COVID-19 deaths in Hong Kong have risen to an average of more than 200 a day in the last week, up from one or two earlier, as the outbreak tears through hundreds of nursing homes, hitting many of the city's unvaccinated elderly.

Bucking the trend, the world's second-most populous nation of India, which accounts for almost 52 per cent of Asia's total COVID-19 deaths, reported a sharp fall in both infections and deaths over the past month.

A Chinese city of nine million was ordered into lockdown on Friday and Shanghai shut its schools as authorities scrambled to halt a Covid-19 outbreak that has pushed nationwide cases to their highest levels in two years.

Changchun, the capital of northeastern Jilin province and an important industrial base, ordered residents to stay at home, allowing one person out every two days to buy "daily necessities".

China's daily coronavirus case count soared past the 1,000 mark this week for the first time since the pandemic's early days in 2020.

Meanwhile, globally Coronavirus has killed at least 6,053,737 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to Worldometers tally based on official sources on Friday.