With thousands of people locked down in tiny apartments, government quarantine centers filling up and many businesses shuttered, Hong Kong is scrambling to sustain a zero-COVID policy that has turned one of the world's most densely packed cities into one of the most isolated.
DEATHS AND INFECTIONS
ASIA-PACIFIC
* Australia suffered its deadliest day of the pandemic on Friday with nearly 100 deaths, but several large states said they expect hospital admissions to fall amid hopes that the latest wave would begin to subside.
* The International Monetary Fund urged Japan to scale back emergency pandemic support, and consider raising taxes on property and capital income once the economy's recovery from the pandemic-induced doldrums is firmly in place.
* The Beijing Winter Olympics kick off in a week, putting sports at center-stage following preparations that have been clouded by diplomatic boycotts and the pandemic that has forced the Games into a tightly sealed bubble.
* With just over a week until the Winter Games begin, teams, are trying to ensure that athletes stay virus-free to get past Beijing's strict checks and make it to the start line as the Omicron variant threatens to dash Olympic dreams.
* Australia's drug regulator approved the use of COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for 16- and 17-year-olds as authorities urge people to get their third doses soon to mitigate the threat from the Omicron variant.
* South Korea reported 16,096 new coronavirus cases for Thursday, another daily record after posting 14,518 a day before, amid the spread of the Omicron variant, the Korea Disease Control, and Prevention Agency said.
EUROPE
* Germany's lower house suspended constitutional limits on new borrowing for another year and approved a supplementary budget to fund investments needed to transition the economy toward carbon neutrality. The conservatives say the funds were earmarked to support the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic.
* Booster shots could reduce future hospitalizations in Europe by at least half a million, the EU's public health agency said.
AMERICAS
* The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has "persistent deficiencies" in its ability to respond to public health emergencies, the U.S. congressional watchdog warned in a report, citing concerns raised by the COVID-19 pandemic.
* Canadian truck drivers determined to shut down central Ottawa over a federal government vaccine mandate rolled across the country toward the capital, boosted by praise from Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk.
* Brazil reported 228,954 new cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and 672 COVID-19 deaths, the health ministry said.
AFRICA AND MIDDLE EAST
* Morocco will reopen its airspace for international flights starting Feb. 7, the state news agency reported.
* A United Arab Emirates medical convoy of one million COVID-19 vaccines reached the Gaza Strip via the Rafah border crossing, state news agency WAM said.
MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS
* China's Walvax Biotechnology has recruited most of the 28,000 participants needed for a large clinical trial of its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine candidate, a senior company official said.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
* Persistently high inflation will haunt the world economy this year, according to a Reuters poll of economists who trimmed their global growth outlook on worries of slowing demand and the risk interest rates would rise faster than assumed so far.
* Singapore's manpower ministry said it expects the country's jobless rate to fall to pre-pandemic levels in the months ahead as the unemployment situation continues to improve, with borders slowly reopening and retrenchments declining.