NEW DELHI: Even as the number of Omicron cases in India jumped to 77, the latest weekly bulletin by the Covid genomic surveillance project has found less than 1 % samples which underwent whole genome sequencing in India with this highly transmissible strain, officials in INSACOG said.
The latest four cases were reported from Delhi on Thursday. Maharashtra alone has reported over 30 cases.
The western state has been reporting the highest number of Covid infections almost since the beginning of the pandemic last year.
Rajasthan, Delhi, Karnataka, Gujarat, Kerala, Telangana, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh too have reported Omicron.
While Omicron has led to a tsunami of fresh Covid infections in Europe, some mathematical models have predicted that India will start seeing a major spike in cases from mid- January to beginning of February next year.
Many experts, however, believe that given the uniqueness of sero-prevalance of previous infections in India’s population and the Covid vaccination coverage, the infection and disease spread may not be on the predicted lines.
Meanwhile, top officials in the National Centre for Disease Control, which leads the INSACOG initiative, said Omicron has already started showing up in samples being tested every week from states and at transport hubs.
“So far, the percentage of this variant, however, is less than 1 % overall. But importantly, we have not picked up clusters of infections anywhere driven by this particular variant,” said an official attached with the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
Omicron has shown to be far more contagious than delta or any other strain of Covid so far, but experts say it is too early to say anything conclusively.
While the country has not started reporting a spike in the infections nationally yet, it did conduct an average 11.5 lakh Covid tests daily during the week that ended on December 14 compared with 11.3 lakh tests during the previous week.
This, said the senior official, was part of a raised surveillance measure to detect cases fast and quickly isolate them.
Home, health secys hold review meet
Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla on Thursday reviewed the COVID-19 situation in the country amid reports of about 70 positive cases of the Omicron variant of the virus in different parts of the country.
Preparedness of health infrastructure of all Union territories to deal with COVID-19 situation was also reviewed, a home ministry spokesperson said.
Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan attended the meeting, in which officials from Union Territory administrations also participated.
"Union Home Secretary chaired meeting today along with Union Health Secretary to review COVID-19 situation in UTs. Preparedness of health infrastructure of all UTs to deal with COVID-19 was also reviewed," the spokesperson said.
Till Wednesday, India reported 68 cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Telangana and West Bengal reported their first cases of the Omicron variant on Wednesday, while four more persons tested positive in Maharashtra.
So far, Maharashtra has reported the highest number of Omicron cases at 32, followed by Rajasthan at 17.
Cases of the variant have also been reported in Karnataka (3), Gujarat (4), Kerala (1), Telangana (2), West Bengal (1) and Andhra Pradesh (1) and Union Territories of Delhi (6) and Chandigarh (1).
India has added 7,974 new coronavirus infections taking the total tally of COVID-19 cases to 3,47,18,602, while the active cases declined to 87,245, according to Union health ministry data updated on Thursday.
The death toll climbed to 4,76,478 with 343 fresh fatalities, according to the data updated at 8 am.
(With PTI Inputs)