According to data released this morning by the Union Health Ministry, India has reported 236 instances of COVID-19's Omicron strain across 16 states and Union Territories, with 104 people recovering or migrating.
New Delhi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will conduct a COVID-19 situation review meeting this evening, amid growing fears over the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variety.
Official sources told the Press Trust of India that PM Modi will assess the pandemic situation across the country.
According to data released this morning by the Union Health Ministry, India has reported 236 instances of COVID-19's Omicron strain across 16 states and Union Territories, with 104 people recovering or migrating.
The Centre said the Omicron variant of the coronavirus is at least three times more transmissible than the Delta variant in a communication to states and union territories on Tuesday, urging them to "activate" war rooms, continue to analyse even minor trends and surges, and take strict and prompt containment action at the district and local levels.
There have been calls for the government to allow booster vaccination doses to be given to people who have already been properly immunised against COVID-19, as some countries have done.
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has a variation called Omicron. It was initially reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) on November 24, 2021, by South Africa. [1] The WHO identified it as a variation of concern on November 26, 2021, and named it "Omicron," the fifteenth letter in the Greek alphabet.
The Omicron variation features an exceptionally large number of mutations, many of which are unique, and many of which disrupt the spike protein targeted by most COVID-19 vaccines at the time of discovery. Despite initial studies showing that the variant caused less serious disease than prior strains, this amount of diversity has raised worries about its transmissibility, immune system evasion, and vaccine resistance. The variation was promptly labelled "of concern," and numerous countries imposed travel restrictions in an attempt to slow its international spread.
The new variety was discovered for the first time on November 22, 2021, in laboratories in Botswana and South Africa, using samples obtained between November 11 and 16; the first known sample was collected on November 8 in the latter nation. A individual landing in Hong Kong from South Africa via Qatar on November 11 and another coming in Belgium from Egypt via Turkey on the same date were the first known examples on other continents. The variation had been confirmed in more than 80 nations and on all continents except Antarctica as of December 16, 2021. According to the World Health Organization, Omicron was likely in most countries throughout the world by mid-December, whether they had discovered it or not.
PANGO lineage B.1.1.529 was declared a variety of concern by the WHO's Technical Advisory Group on SARS-CoV-2 Virus Evolution on November 26 and given the Greek letter omicron. SARS-CoV-2 variants are identified using Greek letters. To avoid confusion with the parallels between the English word "new" and the Chinese surname Xi, the WHO skipped the preceding letters nu and xi in the Greek alphabet. Mu was formerly referred to as a "variant of interest."
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