BHUBANESWAR: As 28 new Omicron cases on Monday pushed the tally of the infectious Covid variant beyond 100 in Odisha, the state government placed orders for five lakh OmiSure RT-PCR testing kits from Tata Medical and Diagnostics Ltd (Tata MD) to detect the strain without having to go through the time-consuming process of genome sequencing.
Odisha is the first state in the country to order OmiSure kits developed by the firm in partnership with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
Sources said Odisha state Medical Corporation Ltd (OSMCL) has placed an order for the kit that “specifically identifies Omicron without the need for sequencing.”
The indigenously developed kit that received Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) approval last week is expected to help the state government in fighting the super mutant strain of novel coronavirus effectively as it is claimed to be capable of producing results in just four hours.
Omicron tally jumped to 102 in Odisha after detection of the infectious Covid strain from all 28 samples sequenced at the Institute of Life Sciences (ILS), Bhubaneswar.
Director of Public Health Dr. Niranjan Mishra said the new infections include eight locals and 20 with travel history. He said 18 are foreign returnees from Oman, Abu Dhabi, Ethiopia, Dubai and Switzerland, while two had travelled within India. The local cases include four from Jagatsinghpur, two from Cuttack and one each from Khurda and Kendrapara.
On the other hand, the state logged 4,829 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours taking the active caseload to 20,560. There, however, was no fatality recorded during this period.
The daily positivity rate also declined marginally to 6.5 per cent from 6.72 per cent on the previous day due to an increasing number of tests.
Health Services Director Dr. Bijay Mohapatra said as experts have predicted the current wave to reach a peak in Maharashtra and a few other states in the next 15 to 20 days, it could also be the same for Odisha where cases surged in the last one week.