Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Chandigarh reported their first Omicron case on Sunday.
Representational image.
The spread of Omicron cases has seen governments across the world and in India take steps to ramp up testing, especially at airports and other points of entry, to keep it from becoming yet another COVID-19 wave.
In India, as of Sunday evening, the Omicron cases went up to 38 with more people testing positive in the country. Here’s what you need to know:
New cases in Kerala, Chandigarh and Andhra Pradesh
Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Chandigarh reported their first Omicron case on Sunday, while Maharashtra and Karnataka each recorded one more case of the COVID-19 variant, taking the tally in the country to 38. All the five persons in the cases reported on Sunday had arrived from foreign countries, PTI reported. With this, Omicron has been detected in Maharashtra (18), Rajasthan (9), Karnataka (3), Karnataka (3), Kerala (1) and Andhra Pradesh (1) and Union Territories of Delhi (2) and Chandigarh (1).
Chandigarh: Chandigarh reported its first case with a 20-year-old fully vaccinated man testing positive for the Covid variant. The man came to India from Italy to meet his relatives. Later, in a statement issued Sunday evening, health officials said that he has now tested as Covid negative, but his five family contacts have tested positive for the virus, but it’s not clear if they are also infected with the Omicron variant. They said the man is currently in institutional quarantine.
“He was currently living in Italy. He had come to see some of his relatives here recently. His report for whole genomic sequencing was received late night on December 11 and found positive for Omicron variant,” Director, Health Services, Chandigarh, Dr Suman Singh told PTI.
Kerala: Kerala Health Minister Veena George said the first case of COVID-19 variant Omicron has been confirmed in the state on Sunday. In a video posted on her Facebook page, the minister said that the patient was a Kerala native who recently came from the United Kingdom. The patient’s condition is stable and there was no need to panic as the government was taking all necessary steps to curb the spread of the new variant of the virus, she said. A man who had arrived from South Africa became the third person to test positive for the COVID-19 variant in Karnataka, while a 40-year-old man tested positive after returning to Nagpur in Maharashtra from a West African country, taking the state’s tally of Omicron cases to 18.
Andhra Pradesh: The state health department said the person, who first landed in Mumbai from Ireland, was tested and found negative. He was then allowed to travel onward to Visakhapatnam on November 27. “On conducting a second RT-PCR test in Vizianagaram, he tested positive for COVID-19 . His sample was then sent to the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad for genome sequencing and the result came out as Omicron positive,” the Public Health Director said in a release. The person, however, did not have any symptoms and a re-test on December 11 showed he was COVID-19 negative. “There are no other Omicron cases in the state,” the director was quoted by PTI as saying. So far, 15 foreign travellers who came to the state were found positive and all the samples were sent to CCMB for genome sequencing.
“Of the 15, genome sequencing reports related to 10 cases were received and only one of them was confirmed Omicron positive,” the statement added.
WHO warning
The World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that Omicron was more transmissible than the Delta variant, which was the prime cause of the deadly second wave in India. AFP reported the WHO as saying Omicron had spread to 63 countries as of 9 December. Faster transmission of Omicron, according to the WHO, was noted in South Africa, where Delta is less prevalent, and in Britain, where Delta is the dominant strain.
The WHO said that the lack of data meant that it could not say if Omicron’s rate of transmission was because it was less prone to immune responses, higher transmissibility or a combination of both, AFP reported.
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