Health authorities worked closely with biotech companies to ramp up laboratory tests and aggressively mobilising technological tools and public workers to trace contacts and enforce quarantines.

But the country’s strengths have been rendered irrelevant by the unprecedented spike in infections fuelled by the Omicron variant, which has stretched health and administrative resources.

Officials had already been forced to expand at-home treatments, reduce quarantine periods, and reshape testing policy around rapid antigen test kits, despite concerns over their reliability, to save laboratory tests for people in their 60s or older and those with existing medical conditions who are at higher risk for serious illness.

The plans to further ease the monitoring and quarantines came as health and public workers struggle to keep up with the near 150,000 people being treated at home for mild or moderate symptoms, which have led to delays in drug prescriptions and has paralysed contact tracing.

Officials say public workers who had been monitoring virus carriers through GPS-enabled smartphone apps will now be assigned to help with at-home treatments. Virus carriers will no longer be required to report to local health offices when they leave home to visit doctors, while their cohabiting family members can now freely go out to buy food, medicine and other essentials.

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Low-risk virus carriers, who are in their 50s or younger and have no pre-existing medical conditions, will now be left to monitor their conditions on their own and contact local hospitals if their symptoms worsen. Health workers will still make daily check-up calls to people in their 60s and older or those with pre-existing medical conditions.

“We are planning to transition toward an anti-virus strategy that’s concentrated on maintaining essential social functions while dealing with huge numbers of infections and people placed under quarantine,” Jeong, the KDCA’s commissioner, said during a government briefing.

Australia set to reopen to foreign tourists

Australia imposed some of the world’s toughest travel restrictions on its citizens and permanent residents in March 2020 to prevent them from bringing Covid-19 home.

When the border restrictions were relaxed in November in response to an increasing vaccination rate among the Australian population, international students and skilled migrants were prioritised over tourists in being welcomed back to Australia.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said his senior ministers agreed on Monday that the border would reopen to all vaccinated visas holders from February 21.

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“Events earlier in the year should have sent a very clear message, I think, to everyone around the world that that is the requirement to enter into Australia,” Morrison said.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said visitors who could provide proof of a medical reason they could not be vaccinated could apply for a travel exemption.

Tourist operators have been lobbying the government to bring tourists back sooner. The southern hemisphere summer is in its final month.

The Australian Tourism Export Council, the peak industry body representing the nation’s tourism export sector, said tourism operations were looking forward to rebuilding their markets.

“Australian tourism businesses will rejoice in the news that our borders will reopen to all international travellers,” the council’s managing director Peter Shelley said in a statement.

“It’s been a long, hard and desperate road for every tourism business across the country and we have lost many along the way, but this news will give those who have survived a clear target to work towards and a start point for the rebuilding of the industry.”

Papua New Guinea PM home from China after testing positive

Papua New Guinea’s prime minister has returned home from Beijing after a positive Covid-19 diagnosis scuppered plans for face-to-face meetings with Chinese leaders, the government said.

PNG has officially recorded 37,390 Covid-19 cases in a country of 9 million people.

But testing and tracing are minimal, and the real number is believed to be in the millions. Under 4 per cent of the population is vaccinated.

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Clinics around the country reported at least 2.6 million people – more than one-quarter of the population – presented with flu or pneumonia-like symptoms between March 2020 and September 2021.

The prime minister’s condition was not known as he was ushered quickly through the airport on Sunday with close contacts prohibited. He is now in isolation.

Indonesia bans foreign tourists arrivals in Jakarta

The Southeast Asian country has seen a jump in cases, with more than 36,000 infections recorded on Sunday and the bed occupancy rate at hospitals in the capital reaching 63 per cent.

The move to bar tourists flying to Jakarta comes just days after Bali welcomed the first international flight in nearly two years carrying foreign visitors.

The new regulations apply to foreign tourists and Indonesians who have travelled abroad for holidays, the ministry said in a statement released late on Sunday.

The decision to “temporarily restrict tourist arrivals” was intended to slow the spread of the coronavirus, said Novie Riyanto, director general for civil aviation at the ministry.

Police have also implemented a curfew in downtown Jakarta from midnight to 4am as infections have kept climbing.

Indonesian officials have warned that the surge in cases driven by the Omicron variant may not peak until late February.

Despite these concerns, the resort island of Bali welcomed a flight from Tokyo last Thursday carrying six foreigners, mostly travel agents who were on board to monitor the island’s readiness to receive foreign tourists.

Bali officially opened to foreign visitors from 19 countries last October, but with no non-cargo flights until last week foreign tourist arrivals have been limited.

Japan’s Kishida aims for 1 million shots a day as support wanes

Kishida told parliament on Monday his government would step up operations at large-scale vaccination facilities as it tries to reach the target. Employers would also be encouraged to press ahead with workplace boosters, he said.

Support for Kishida’s cabinet fell 8 percentage points to 58 per cent in a survey carried out by the Yomiuri newspaper and news network NNN from February 4-6, while a poll by JNN showed a drop of 6.5 percentage points. The country has also set records for infections because of Omicron, placing strain on the medical system.

Kishida has sought to stay closely in line with public opinion on pandemic policy, after his two predecessors lost support and stepped down amid criticism of their handling of the health crisis. He faces an upper house election in July that will be key to his chances of staying in office.

While approval of his overall virus policy fell 4 percentage points in the Yomiuri/NNN survey, that was still higher than disapproval, at 44 per cent. Almost three quarters of respondents said they approved of a decision to cut isolation time for close contacts of those infected, while 59 per cent said the vaccine roll-out was slow.

Kishida met ministers in charge of health, the pandemic and vaccines over the weekend, national public broadcaster NHK said. The government is also set to extend a state of quasi-emergency in Tokyo and 12 other areas, which is currently expected to end on February 13, the Asahi newspaper said. The extension would probably be for three weeks, and an official decision is set to be taken by Thursday, the paper said.

While less stringent than a state of emergency, the quasi-emergency allows local governments to push bars and restaurants to close early and restrict alcohol sales. Data published last week showed consumer sentiment fell in January by the biggest margin in almost two years as Omicron spread.

Nearly 90,000 new cases nationwide were reported on Sunday, including 17,526 in Tokyo, as local Omicron infections showed no signs of slowing.

Experts say the infections are now spreading to vulnerable elderly people who are beginning to fill more hospital beds.

Anti-vax protesters descend on Australian capital

Demonstrators blocked roads around the airport on Sunday when politicians and their staff were returning to Canberra from around the country ahead of the parliamentary sitting week. A small number of police were deployed to the airport to stop the demonstrators from accessing the building.

Neither Prime Minister Scott Morrison or the Opposition Labor Party have commented on the Canberra protests.

Despite the high vaccination rates, a vocal minority of Australians have refused to get their shots, leading to the protests in Canberra. While the anti-vaccination demonstrators claim their numbers have reached more than 100,000 at times, local media put the total number of attendees is closer to a few thousand.

Sunday’s demonstrations followed weeks of incidents across the capital involving the protesters, including multiple clashes outside Australia’s Parliament House and attempts to blockade the National Press Club on Tuesday when Morrison was making a speech.

On December 30, the doors of Canberra’s Old Parliament House were set on fire during an anti-vaccination demonstration.

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Daily infections have since dipped to 7,752 on Sunday, amid restrictions that include limited capacity for restaurants and capping the number of unique visitors to each household.

Singapore has reported over 100,000 cases spanning the last month, although over 99 per cent of the cases are mild or asymptomatic.

Across Asia, authorities are confronting a similar pattern as the more easily transmissible Omicron variant becomes dominant, even as health officials in several countries report that surges are not driving hospitalisations or deaths as high as seen with the previous Delta variant.

Thailand cases up, but severely ill patients drops

Department chief Opas Karnkawinpong said Thailand might consider relaxing some of the country’s pandemic restrictions, as the Omicron variant seemed to be less severe.

“The global situation of Covid-19 seems to be moving in the same direction,” he was quoted as saying in the Bangkok Post. “Many countries have started to ease measured despite spikes in daily infections.”

Reporting by Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Reuters, Bloomberg