Spike in Maharashtra, Delhi: India's Omicron cases go past 200+

Maharashtra and Delhi top an official statewide list of Omicron cases in the country, even as the total number of cases of COVID’s fast-spreading strain crossed the 200-mark in India.

The Union health ministry said on Tuesday (December 21) that out of the 200 cases, 77 patients have recovered or migrated.

According to the statewide status of the Omicron variant in the country, Maharashtra and Delhi are leading with 54 cases each. Delhi, which was among the worst hit in the second wave, has  registered 107 cases on Sunday, triggering concern of another wave since the capital has now crossed the 100-mark after a gap of six months.

Telangana has the third highest number of Omicron cases with a tally of 20, followed closely by Karnataka with 19 cases and Rajasthan with 18 cases. Kerala, which had been in the eye of the storm during the COVID-19 pandemic, has 15 cases, while Gujarat has clocked in 14.

Media reports have said that two new Omicron cases have been recorded in Odisha for the first time. Bhubaneswar-based Institute of Life Sciences (ILS) confirmed the existence of the variant in the two patients after conducting the genome sequencing of 12 samples.

Also read: US: Omicron now dominant strain, first death reported

Both of them have travel history to foreign nations – Nigeria and Qatar, respectively, said the government officials to reporters. The traveller from the African country had been fully vaccinated.

The effectiveness of COVID vaccines available in India against the Omicron variant will be known within a week after the results of a related study will be published, said Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya in Parliament on Monday. He also assured that the  government is taking measures to ensure they will be able to tackle any surge after the learnings they got from the first and second waves. The minister said this included increasing medical oxygen capacity and buffer stock of medicines.

Meanwhile, the ministry’s updated data showed that India had recorded the lowest daily case count in 581 days of 5,326 cases of COVID infections over the past 24 hours.

In India, the total number of COVID cases stands at 3.48 crore. Currently, there are 79,097 active cases in the country, which happens to be the lowest in 574 days. There have been 453 deaths over the past 24 hours, which has taken the fatality count in the pandemic to 4.78 lakhs.

Once the capital crossed the 100-mark after a gap of six months, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal held a meeting with disaster management authorities. After the meeting, he assured that adequate arrangments have been made to tackle a spike in cases and asked people not to panic. He however urged people not to relax and not to stop using masks due to the drop in cases. People need to continue following COVID-19 norms, he said.

The World Health Organisation has warned that the Omicron variant of the coronavirus is spreading faster than the Delta variant and is causing infections in people already vaccinated or who have recovered from the COVID-19 disease. The head of the World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had said on Monday that there is now “consistent evidence” to show Omicron is spreading significantly faster than the Delta variant.

The situation in the US continues to be alarming as the new variant accounts for 73 per cent of all sequenced COVID cases. While the delta variant, which had been the dominant form of the virus in the US last week, has now receded to roughly 27 per cent of sequenced cases, said media reports.