India’s tally of cases with COVID-19’s Omicron strain has crossed 200, the Union Health Ministry announced on Tuesday, 21 December, adding that 77 of these patients have either recovered or migrated.
Maharshtra, which had 54 active cases of Omicron till Tuesday afternoon, reported 11 more cases later in the evening. Currently, there are 65 active cases of the new variant in the state. Meanwhile, three cases of Omicron were confirmed from a locality in Jammu by National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
Earlier, the ministry had said that there are 54 Omicron cases in Delhi, followed by 20 cases in Telangana, 19 cases in Karnataka, 18 in Rajasthan, 15 in Kerala, and 14 in Gujarat.
Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain told news agency ANI on Tuesday, “Till now, there're 34 cases of Omicron variant in LNJP hospital. Out of these 34 patients, 17 patients discharged.”
However, on Centre stating 54 cases in Delhi, Jain said, “We will check with the Centre's and private hospitals.”
India reported 5,326 new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, the lowest daily case count in 581 days. As per the bulletin, there are now 79,097 active cases in the country, the lowest in 574 days.
With 453 deaths over the past 24 hours, the total death tally stands at 4.78 lakh deaths.
This comes a day after Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG), the Union government's research body, said in its latest bulletin, that there is no clear evidence on the transmissibility, severity or immune evasion of the Omicron variant in India.
It had, however, noted, that the new COVID-19 variant continues to grow globally as a "variant of concern."
"At this time, there is no clear evidence regarding transmissibility, immune evasion, or severity (of Omicron) in India," INSACOG's bulletin available on its official website noted.
However, the Omicron strain is leading to a global spike in cases. In the United States (US), for instance, the new variant accounts for 73 percent of all sequenced COVID-19 cases last week, NDTV reported.
(With inputs from ANI and NDTV.)
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)