Omicron spread in India: Health Minister to review situation in 8 states, UTs on Friday

Mansukh Mandaviya will check the preparedness of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Telangana, Lakshadweep, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and the Andaman and Nicobar Island amid rise of Omicron variant of Covid-19

New Delhi: Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya will on Friday (January 28) review the Covid situation and the public health preparedness to tackle the Omicron spread in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Telangana, Lakshadweep, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The review meeting, to be held through video conferencing, is scheduled at 2.30 pm on Friday.

Earlier this week, the Indian SARS-COV-2 Genomics Consortia INSACOG said that Omicron is in the community transmission stage in India. It has become dominant in multiple metro cities where new cases have been rising exponentially, with BA.2 lineage, an infectious sub-variant of Omicron, found in a substantial fraction in the country, INSACOG said.

As many as 9,672 Omicron samples were found in January in genome sequencing constituting 75% of the total sequenced samples of Covid-19, a huge rise from 1,292 in December, the government said on Thursday.

At a press conference, National Centre for Disease Control Director Dr S K Singh said sub-lineages of Omicron -- BA.1 and BA.2 -- were found in sequenced samples while BA.3 has not been found in India yet. "We were getting more samples of BA.1 earlier mostly in travellers. But now we are seeing that BA.2 has become more prevalent in the community," Singh said. 

Talking about increasing cases of Omicron, Singh said that out of the total genome sequencing reports received so far, increasing cases of Omicron have been found in the month of January.