Omicron: India's Omicron tally crosses 126; Karnataka reports cluster of Covid cases

Nations across Europe are moving to reimpose tougher measures to stem a new wave of COVID-19 infections spurred by the highly transmissible omicron variant, triggering calls for protests from Paris to Barcelona.

As case numbers escalated, alarmed ministers in France, and Austria tightened travel restrictions. Paris cancelled its New Year's Eve fireworks. Denmark closed theaters, concert halls, amusement parks and museums.

Ireland imposed an 8 pm curfew on pubs and bars and limited attendance at indoor and outdoor events. Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin captured the sense of the continent in an address to the nation, saying the new restrictions were needed to protect lives and livelihoods from the resurgent virus.
“None of this is easy,” Martin said Friday night.

“We are all exhausted with COVID and the restrictions it requires. The twists and turns, the disappointments and the frustrations take a heavy toll on everyone. But it is the reality that we are dealing with.”

Other nations may go further still. Dutch government ministers were meeting Saturday to discuss advice from a panel of experts who are recommending a toughening of the partial lockdown that is already in place and has led to a recent decline in infections.

Dutch Health Minister Hugo de Jonge didn't say what measures the government might impose as he headed into the meeting. “There are very serious concerns,” he told reporters in The Hague.”

That's why we're meeting on Saturday to see what we need to do.” Some stores opened earlier than usual Saturday and shoppers flocked into city center shopping areas, fearing it could be their last chance to shop before Christmas.

The number of Omicron cases in Telangana rose to 20 with 12 more people testing positive for the new coronavirus variant on Saturday.

Of the 12 new cases, two were passengers from countries declared "at risk" by the Centre, while 10 came from other nations, a state health department bulletin said. The samples of three persons are awaited for their Omicron variant status.

Meanwhile, Telangana today logged 185 new COVID-19 cases, pushing the tally to 6,79,430, while the death toll rose to 4,014 with one more fatality. The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) accounted for the most number of cases with 78, followed by Medchal Malkajgiri (15) district, the bulletin said, providing details as of 5.30 PM today.

The number of recoveries outnumbered fresh cases with 205 people recovering from the infectious disease. The cumulative number of recoveries till date was 6,71,655.

The Omicron variant has now been identified in 89 countries and is spreading significantly faster than the Delta variant in places where community transmission is high, with a doubling time between 1.5–3 days, the WHO has said.

In its 'Enhancing Readiness for Omicron (B.1.1.529): Technical Brief and Priority Actions for Member States' report on Friday, the World Health Organisation said that given the current available data, it is likely that Omicron will outpace Delta where community transmission occurs.

"Omicron is spreading rapidly in countries with high levels of population immunity and it remains uncertain to what extent the observed rapid growth rate can be attributed to immune evasion, intrinsic increased transmissibility or a combination of both," it said.

"As of 16 December 2021, the Omicron variant has been identified in 89 countries across all six WHO regions. Current understanding of the Omicron variant will continue to evolve as more data becomes available," it said.

Four more new cases of the Omicron variant were detected from Kerala on Saturday, taking the overall tally to 11, the state health department said.

Two cases of the new variant of the coronavirus were detected from Thiruvananthapuram in patients aged 17 and 44. One case was detected in Malappuram, aged 37 and another case was a 49-year-old patient from Thrissur district.

"The 17-year-old patient in Thiruvananthapuram came from the UK while the 44-year-old reached the state from Tunisia in a chartered flight. The patient in Malappuram came from Tanzania while the Thrissur native came from Kenya," Health Minister Veena George said in a release.

Delhi government is ready to tackle the Omicron variant of COVID, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Saturday. He advised people not to panic saying even though the variant was said to spread faster than the previous ones, its symptoms were mild. He said Delhi was unlikely to face another wave of infections, since according to the sero survey conducted by the Delhi government, 96 per cent of the state population was found to have antibodies and a majority of them were vaccinated.

"I have been holding meetings these last few days and I want to assure people that our government is ready to tackle Omicron," Kejriwal said at a Christmas and New Year event hosted by the Delhi Assembly Speaker here in the assembly premises.

Omicron's transmissibility is quite high as compared to Delta, but it's not as severe as Delta... I don't see anything like 2nd wave but there might be a huge number of cases due to high transmissibility: Dr Puneet Misra, Professor of Community Medicine at AIIMS

A couple and their 13-year-old daughter have tested positive for the Omicron variant of coronavirus after returning to Satara in western Maharashtra from Uganda, officials said on Saturday.

Their other daughter, who is five years old, tested positive for COVID-19 but not for the variant. All four returned to Phaltan in Satara district from the African country on December 9, state health department officials said. Owing to the Omicron scare, district officials traced them and asked them to undergo RT-PCR tests.

The husband (35), wife (33) and their elder daughter (13) tested positive for COVID-19 while the report of the younger child was inconclusive, so the samples of all four were sent to the National Institute of Virology for genome sequencing, said Civil Surgeon Dr Subhash Chavan.

Mumbai civic chief IS Chahal on Saturday said ward-level squads will be formed to take action against COVID-19 protocol violators.

Amid the scare from the new Omicron variant of coronavirus and the Christmas-New Year festival season round the corner, he said people in the metropolis must avoid crowding in hotels, restaurants, cinemas, malls and asserted that attendance caps in place for marriages and other functions will have to be adhered to strictly.

The UK government is reportedly drawing up plans for a short two-week circuit breaker lockdown later this month, after Christmas, to try and keep pace with the rapidly spreading Omicron variant, media reports said on Saturday.

According to The Times, draft regulations are being prepared, which would ban different households meeting indoors except for work purposes and pubs and restaurants being limited to outdoor service only.

Leaked minutes from the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, accessed by the BBC, reveal scientists warning ministers that tougher measures need to be brought in "very soon" to try and keep hospitalisations within manageable levels for the National Health Service.

The reports of further lockdown restrictions come as the UK recorded another highest daily total of 93,045 COVID-19 infections on Friday, up 4,669 cases from the previous record of 88,376 set on Thursday.

While the Delta variant remains dominant in most parts of the country, Omicron has taken over in London and Scotland amid a massive surge.

The number of people in hospital with COVID-19 in London has climbed to 1,534, up 28.6 per cent compared to last week.The Financial Times reported that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been presented with a number of options under a so-called Plan C, ranging from "mild guidance to nudge people, right through to lockdown".

Two cluster outbreaks of COVID have been reported from two educational institutions in  Dakshina Kannada today:

• Cluster 1: 14 cases (of which 4 are Omicron)
• Cluster 2: 19 cases (1 is Omicron)

Meanwhile, a traveler from the UK has also tested positive for Omicron. 

(inputs from Raghwan)

Tamil Nadu on Saturday requested the Centre to issue further set of guidelines on testing international passengers arriving in the state after a person from a 'non-risk country' tested positive for the Omicron variant of Covid-19 recently, becoming the first such case reported in the state.

Director of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Dr T S Selvavinayagam in his letter to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare Secretary Rajesh Bhushan requested that international passengers arriving in Tamil Nadu should undergo mandatory post-arrival testing of Covid-19 as against the current practice of testing only those passengers who arrive from 'at risk' countries.

According to him, 28 passengers, who arrived from various overseas destinations till Friday in Tamil Nadu, were detected with 's' gene drop indicating infection of Omicron variant of coronavirus. Of them, only four were from 'high risk' countries while the remaining from 'non-risk countries'.

Egyptian health authorities said they have identified the country's first cases of the highly transmissible omicron variant of the coronavirus. Three people were found to have the variant among 26 travelers who tested positive for coronavirus at Cairo International Airport, the Health Ministry said in a statement late Friday. It didn't say where the three came from. The local Masrawy news outlet reported the three were among travelers from South Africa.

The ministry said two of the people infected showed no symptoms, while the third suffered from mild symptoms. The three have been isolated in a Cairo hospital, it said. Authorities on Friday reported more than 900 confirmed new cases of coronavirus and 43 deaths over the previous 24 hours.

A private nursing college here has been declared a containment zone by Dakshina Kannada district health department after seven students tested positive for Covid-19. All the seven students are from Kerala, studying for first year in the college. They had arrived with Covid-19 negative RT-PCR certificates.

Dakshina Kannada district nodal officer for Covid-19, Dr H Ashok said the infected students have been isolated. Throat swab samples of 43 first year students were tested of which seven students tested positive, he said.

Omicron is now the predominant variant among new cases of Covid in England, and is also causing reinfection around one in 20 cases, according to new analysis published by the UK Health Security Agency (HSA).

Delhi Govt converts 4 pvt hospitals - Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Max (Saket), Fortis (Vasant Kunj) & Batra Hospital (Tughlakabad)  - as Omicron dedicated centres. A total of 5 hospitals in Delhi, including LNJP hospital, will now provide the treatment for the variant.

Amid various studies claiming that Omicron causes only mild disease, a new study shows that there is "no evidence" that Omicron is less severe than the Delta variant of Covid-19.

The new study led by the UK's Imperial College London showed that the risk of reinfection with the Omicron variant is 5.4 times greater than that of the Delta variant.

Closing of schools across the world should be the last resort in the fight against the fast-spreading Omicron Covid-19 variant, outgoing Unicef Executive Director Henrietta Fore said.

"Nationwide school closures should be avoided whenever possible," Xinhua news agency quoted Fore as saying in a statement on Friday.

A 29-year-old man who had returned from New York tested positive for Omicron variant here on Friday, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said in a release. Notably, the man, who has no symptoms, had taken three doses of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine, it added.

Maharashtra on Friday recorded eight new cases of the Omicron variant of coronavirus, taking the tally of such infections to 40, the state health department said.

Earlier, the department had put the state's Omicron patient tally at 48, but a later release revised it to 40.

Days after their return from Zambia in Africa, an elderly couple from Vadodara city of Gujarat has been found infected with the newly discovered Omicron strain of coronavirus, officials said on Friday. With the addition of these two fresh cases, Gujarat's Omicron tally has reached 7, of which three patients have been discharged from hospital.