Omicron in 15 states, tally 257; PM chairs meet today

Omicron in 15 states, tally 257; PM chairs meet today

24 Of 39 Fresh Infections From Southern States

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi:  23.12.2021

Omicron spread to the 15th state/UT in India on Wednesday with Haryana reporting six cases of the highly infectious variant of coronavirus even as 39 fresh infections took the country’s total tally to 257. With cases rising, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for a high-level meeting on Thursday to review Covid-19 situation.

Other states which recorded fresh infections were Telangana (14 cases), Kerala (9), Rajasthan (4), Delhi (3), Bengal  (2) and Andhra Pradesh (1).

Haryana health and family welfare minister Anil Vij told the assembly that three residents each from Gurgaon and Faridabad district have tested positive for Omicron. All three Gurgaon residents have a history of travelling to India via Dubai from the UK.

Most of the 14 patients who tested positive for Omicron in Telangana are medical tourists. While two of them arrived from the UK, an ‘at-risk’ nation, 12 came from Kenya and Somalia, both ‘non-risk’ countries.

In Kerala, all 9 fresh cases — six in Ernakulam and three in Thiruvananthapuram — had landed from abroad recently. While three of them came from the UK, two each came from Tanzania and Nigeria and one each from Ghana and Ireland.

K’taka: Will trace contacts of +ve patients in 24 hrs

Bengaluru:

With Omicron cases spreading rapidly across the globe, the Karnataka government on Wednesday said it would make aggressive efforts to trace, track and quarantine the primary and secondary contacts of Covid-positive persons within 24 hours.

TK Anil Kumar, principal secretary, health department, has directed all the district authorities to ensure dedicated staff for contact tracing and for quarantine, home isolation watch immediately. The primary contacts should be tested on day 1 and day 8 and home-quarantined during this period. If they test positive, they are to be treated and managed as per the state Covid protocol. P 2

No travel history for cases in Raj

However, three of the four new Omicron cases that were reported from Rajasthan neither had any recent travel history nor did they come in contact with foreign travelers, causing concern among the health authorities. The three are residents of Jaipur and the health department has launched a massive exercise to test those who came in contact with them.

The fourth person who tested positive on Wednesday is a 27-year-old Kenyan woman who had travelled to Jaipur recently and her samples were sent for genome sequencing after she developed Covid symptoms. The Kenyan is currently admitted to LNJP hospital in Delhi. “We have informed the hospital in Delhi about her testing positive for Omicron,” said Jaipur’s chief medical health officer Dr Narottam Sharma.