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Australia on Friday reported its first community transmission of the new Omicron coronavirus variant, but authorities held steady on a plan to reopen the economy amid hopes it would prove to be milder than previous strains.

The new case, a school student from Sydney, was the first confirmed Omicron infection of a person who had not travelled overseas, a sign the variant was now in the community, authorities in New South Wales state said.

"Transmission is always a concern but we again need to keep it in perspective," NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard told reporters, explaining why Australia's most populous state was not reversing its staged reopening from strict lockdowns imposed in July due to the Delta variant.

"Worldwide there is no clarity around whether this particular variant is going to cause us anywhere near the problems that the earlier variants caused us."

Australia now has nine confirmed cases of the Omicron variant, eight in NSW, where a third of the country's 25 million people live. Although some states have tightened domestic border controls, the federal government is hoping to avoid a return to stop-start lockdowns.

Even so, it has postponed by two weeks a plan to let foreign students and skilled migrants into the country, and Australians returning from southern Africa must complete two weeks of hotel quarantine.

Asked if the federal government would stop targeting arrivals from southern Africa, now that the new variant was no longer limited to people who had been there, Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said "we will continue to review the medical advice, but we follow it because it has kept Australia safe."

Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly, the government's top health adviser, said Australia would not recommend bringing forward vaccine booster shots, as other countries have done, as there was "no evidence" this would improve protection against Omicron.

Australia's aggressive COVID-19 response has helped it avoid the high numbers of COVID-19 deaths recorded in many other countries, with about 212,000 cases and 2,000 deaths.

The country's remote Northern Territory, which is home to most of its indigenous population, recorded its first COVID-19 death, an indigenous woman in her 70s. (Reuters)

 Croatia's tourist facilities face a shortage of up to one-third of their workforce next year, head of the national association of biggest tourist firms Veljko Ostojic said on Friday.

Croatia's tourist industry, largely focused on the summer months on the popular Adriatic coast, accounts to almost 20% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) and many seasonal workers can earn more in other countries.

"Some 100,000 people work in the tourist sector and we are missing some 30,000 to 35,000 people. The tourist businesses have no time to wait and many have kicked off campaigns to seek skilled people," Ostojic told Reuters.

Besides at local job market, the hoteliers and restaurant and bar owners seek skilled workers in other Balkan countries like Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia or Montenegro, but also in some more distant areas like Ukraine or the Philippines.

They compete with better paid jobs in more affluent European Union countries, like Austria or Germany. From January Switzerland opens its job market for Croats which puts additional pressure on tourist businesses.

"The salaries for waiters or cooks are twice higher in Austria, for example, but we could compete with attractive accommodation conditions, quicker paperwork for working permits, lack of language barrier and proximity to home for the Balkan workers," Ostojic said.

Aminess, a northern Adriatic hotelier, is seeking 1,000 seasonal workers for next summer and has just kicked off a campaign to attract workers for positions like cooks, waiters, butchers, entertainers and cleaning staff.

"We seek workers with experience or adequate education, but it is not a must as we also invest in education of future employees. We will invest one million kuna ($150,102) next year," said Marina Peric, head of human resources in Aminess.

Ostojic said that tourist sector is urging digitalisation of paperwork for obtaining work permits for those coming from outside the EU.

"Without a workforce some facilities will remain closed or must shorten working hours," he said. (Reuters)

 It was a chocolate biscuit that turned Masayuki Iwasa, a self-professed penny-pincher with a sweet tooth, into one of Japan's most scrupulous chroniclers of "shrinkflation".

Having sworn off his favourite Chocoliere tartlets for a decade after Bourbon Corp (2208.T) reduced the package size, the newspaper delivery man and part-time stock trader was spurred to action around two years ago after he noticed the biscuits had also gotten smaller.

"I was annoyed they were shrinking and shrinking," said the 45-year-old Iwasa, whose website, www.neage.jp (price increases), documents surreptitious price hikes.

Today he tracks prices of some 400 goods and services - everything from washing powder to day passes at Tokyo Disneyland. The bulk of his website is devoted to so-called shrinkflation, when a product gets smaller but the price stays the same.

"In Japan, the impact of deflation means it is difficult to raise prices directly, so shrinkflation is a kind of a measure of last resort," Iwasa said. "But basically it's sneaky and it bothers me."

While the practice is hardly unique to Japan - Mondelez International Inc (MDLZ.O) sparked a global outcry when it reduced the size of the Toblerone chocolate bar in 2016 - its prevalence in the world's No.3 economy is a notable legacy of years of deflation.

Because consumer prices and wages barely budged for the last two decades, companies have become reluctant to increase prices for fear of losing customers.

That's a headache for policymakers, who ultimately want to see higher prices that are an essential component to a virtuous spending cycle that drives economic growth, especially as the population ages and declines.

There are now signs that even Japan Inc may be nearing a tipping point, as soaring raw material costs and a weak yen drive up what companies pay for fuel, coffee beans and beef.

While only 14% of Japanese firms have so far passed on higher costs to customers, another 40% say they plan to, a recent Reuters poll showed.

Yet food companies are among the least willing to pass on costs, the survey showed, reflecting their fear of alienating shoppers.

"As the price of raw materials increases, food manufacturers would like to raise prices but it is difficult for them to do that," said Tsutomu Watanabe, an economics professor at the University of Tokyo.

Watanabe said many companies will balk at outright price increases, just as they did in 2008 during another commodities surge and in 2013-2014 when the yen weakened sharply, leaving shrinkflation as one of the few ways to protect margins.

CONSUMER BACKLASH

In 2008, Bourbon cut the number of Chocoliere biscuits in a 150 yen ($1.30) packet to 14 from 16, citing higher costs, according to Iwasa's website, which uses company announcements, internet archives and other public information to track prices.

Bourbon later shaved just under a gram off each of the confections, reducing the packet size to 110.6 grams from 122.5 grams.

The company did not respond to requests for comment.

Kameda Seika Co (2220.T) was hit with criticism this year after it reduced the contents of packages of its "kaki pi" rice cracker and peanut mix by 5% to 190 grams.

The size was cut because Kameda could no longer offset rising commodity and transport costs with belt-tightening elsewhere, a spokesperson told Reuters.

Calbee Inc (2229.T) said it will reduce the contents of some of its potato chips and Jagarico potato sticks by about 5% from next month. Separately, it will raise prices of more than a dozen potato chip products by up to 10%.

The snack maker received more negative feedback from customers over the shrinkage than the price hikes, said spokesperson Satoshi Yoshida.

"There may be customers who have had such a negative experience in which they felt deceived and have a bad memory of it," he said.

Lotte Co was criticised when it announced a renewal of its Bacchus chocolates in Japan last year, without mentioning it had cut the package to 10 pieces from 12, according to posts online.

Spokesperson Yuichi Nitanai confirmed the reduction but declined to comment further.

The government's official consumer price index takes into account reduced package sizes, said an official at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which compiles the index.

But the impact of shrinkflation may still not be fully reflected in that data because the government index tends to use leading brands, whereas shrinkflation is more prevalent at lesser known companies, said University of Tokyo's Watanabe.

"Top firms have a certain amount of pride and don't want to be seen doing something that looks unattractive such as shrinkflation," he said. (Reuters)

 Asia-Pacific countries should boost their healthcare capacity and fully vaccinate their people to prepare for a surge in COVID-19 cases fuelled by the Omicron variant, officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

First detected in southern Africa last month and dubbed a "variant of concern" by the WHO, scientists are still gathering data to establish how contagious Omicron is, and the severity of the illness it causes.

It has been reported in at least two dozen countries, and started gaining a foothold in Asia this week, with cases reported from Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and India. Many governments have responded by tightening travel rules. read more

"Border controls can buy time but every country and every community must prepare for new surges in cases," Takeshi Kasai, WHO regional director for the western Pacific, told a virtual media briefing.

"People should not only rely on border measures. What is most important is to prepare for these variants with potential high transmissibility. So far the information available suggests we don't have to change our approach," Kasai said.

Kasai said countries must utilise lessons learned from dealing with the Delta variant and urged them to fully vaccinate vulnerable groups and implement preventive measures such as mask wearing and social distancing rules.

Despite restrictions on international visitors, Australia became the latest country on Friday to report community transmission of Omicron, a day after it was found locally in five U.S. states. (Reuters)