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India’s total count of Omicron cases rose to 161 on Monday, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya told the Rajya Sabha. The Minister said that while surveillance and testing have been increased, the majority of the cases are asymptomatic and 44 have already been discharged.
“We have made arrangements to monitor the Omicron situation by issuing the guidelines on surveillance, testing, etc. Of these 13 per cent are absolutely mild, 80 per cent asymptomatic and 44 cases have gone back to their places after recovering,” Mandaviya said.
Genome sequencing
“Thirty-eight labs are doing genome sequencing to detect Omicron. We have achieved the capacity of doing genome sequencing of 30,000 samples per month. We have developed a culture for the Omicron variant to study vaccine efficacy. We will get the results in a week,” Mandavaiya stated.
“Vaccine is the most potent weapon to fight against Covid... India’s first dose vaccination coverage is 88 per cent and the second dose coverage 58 per cent. As many as 417 crore doses are still available with the States to be administered,” Mandaviya said. He added that the country’s vaccine manufacturing capacity has also increased to 31 crore doses per month and will further rise to 45 crore. India’s total Covid-19 numbers remained relatively low at 6,563. The weekly positivity rate has remained at 0.60 per cent for more than a month. The daily positivity rate is 0.75 per cent.
The numbers in States like Delhi showed a rise with 91 new cases reported on Monday in the Capital and the positivity rate touching 0.2 per cent for the first time since June.
Omicron cases surged to 15 in Kerala. According to State officials, they are sending the samples of passengers from ‘At Risk’ and ‘Not At Risk’ countries for genome sequencing. However, in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, random and all samples of Covid patients respectively are being sent for genome sequencing. In Andhra Pradesh, where only one Omicron positive patient has been detected so far, about 40 people were tested for Covid, the contacts of the Omicron patient.
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