All these persons have been kept in single room isolation in designated health care facilities by respective state governments.
All these people have been kept in single room isolation in designated healthcare facilities by respective state governments and their close contacts have also been put under quarantine, the ministry said.
No case of the new Omicron variant of coronavirus has been detected in India yet, a senior government official said on Monday.
In the wake of Omicron cases being detected in a few places in the country, the Union health ministry on Wednesday wrote to states and union territories, stating that patients of the new coronavirus variant have to be treated in designated COVID facilities with separate isolation area.
Following random testing, if anybody is found Covid-positive, the sample should be sent for genomic testing at the designated INSACOG laboratory network, Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan wrote in a letter to his civil aviation ministry counterpart Rajiv Bansal.
Amid rising cases of Covid, the Centre on Friday asked eight states including Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra to maintain a strict watch and take pre-emptive action in any area of concern to control any emerging spread of infection.
Amid mounting concerns over the new 'XE' variant of Covid and a day after the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation reported its first case in Mumbai, Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope on Thursday said the state health department has not received any confirmation about the variant and thus cannot confirm it.
These 25 people include the 20 who were found positive with the mutated strain on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Amid a spurt in COVID-19 cases in some parts of the world, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday cautioned against complacency and directed officials to strengthen the ongoing surveillance measures, especially at international airports.
He urged people not to panic and clarified that there was no change in the guidelines for international air travel so far.
Modi stressed on the need for constant genome sequencing to monitor emergence of mutants and also to ensure increased oxygen availability, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) said in a statement.
As per the document, these 10 states are Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Mizoram, Karnataka, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Punjab.
The presence of the new UK variant of the coronavirus has been reported by several countries, including Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, Lebanon and Singapore.
Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said upcoming festivals and mass congregations in different parts of the country may potentially facilitate transmission of infectious diseases, including COVID-19.
Six Covid-19 cases were reported on Wednesday after screening 3,476 passengers of 11 flights that arrived in India from "at-risk" countries and the samples have been sent for genomic sequencing, the Health Ministry said amid concerns over the 'Omicron' variant of coronavirus.
Instead of seven-day home quarantine as mandated earlier, all travellers will self-monitor their health for 14 days after their arrival.
Testing for influenza-like illness and severe acute respiratory infections cases has been the pillars of COVID management for the government.
All these people have been kept in single room isolation in designated healthcare facilities by respective state governments, the ministry had said earlier.
Till January 11, the number of people affected by this strain of the coronavirus was 96.
'The key purpose of vaccination is to prevent hospitalisation, severe disease, and death.' 'All vaccines work equally, although mild disease cannot be prevented.'
Their close contacts have also been put under quarantine. Comprehensive contact tracing has been initiated for co-travellers, family contacts and others. Genome sequencing on other specimens is going on, the ministry said.
Amid growing concerns over the spurt in COVID-19 cases in China and some other countries, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said the focus is to ensure that no unknown variant of the virus enters India and at the same time there is no impediment to travelling.
The ministry said the mutated UK strain was detected in eight samples at the National Centre for Disease Control, one at the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, Kalyani (near Kolkata), one at the National Institute of Virology Pune, seven at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences Hospital Bengaluru, two at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad and one at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Delhi.
An immune-escape Covid-19 strain coupled with the natural spike in influenza and pneumonia cases during winters may lead to a rise in hospitalisation.
Noting that various mathematical models meant for predicting coronavirus waves have repeatedly failed to give reliable results due to a small sample size, the Centre on Tuesday said it is closely following the virus trajectory globally, given the emergence of its new variants.
All the people who have tested positive for the new variant of the virus were kept in single-room isolation at designated healthcare facilities by the respective state governments, the ministry had earlier said.
The presence of spike protein facilitates a virus' entry into the host cell and is responsible for making it transmissible and causing infection.
Two cases of the new Omicron variant of coronavirus have been detected in Karnataka, the Union government said on Thursday while asking people not to panic but follow Covid-appropriate behaviour and get vaccinated without delay.
The Centre said that there is no reason to believe presently on the that they are responsible for the surge in cases in some districts in these two states.
With the reporting of Omicron, a highly mutated variant of SARSCoV-2 virus and its classification as a Variant of Concern (VoC) by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Union Ministry of Health revised its 'Guidelines for international arrivals', Mandaviya said in a written reply.
The decision was taken at a meeting headed by Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai with senior ministers, officials and the COVID-19 technical advisory committee consisting of experts in Bengaluru.
It was on January 30, 2020 when a third-year medical student from Wuhan university tested positive for coronavirus, becoming the country's first COVID-19 patient, days after she had returned home following semester holidays.
'Scientific data has proven that masks can reduce COVID-91 transmission by 53 per cent...A booster dose of vaccine, even if it works, is just a temporary fix'
'In the earlier waves, doubling of cases was happening at an interval of 4-6 days.' 'But in the case of omicron the doubling time we are seeing is in the range of 2-4 days.'
The states were advised to conduct surveillance and report district-wise severe acute respiratory illness and influenza-like illness cases on a daily basis and also to send these for genome sequencing to the mapped INSACOG laboratories.
If booster shots are given on priority, the pace of vaccination may slow further. In the worst case scenario, the country will take till mid-March to vaccinate its entire adult population partially.
'There is no emergency of a third wave that we are rushing for booster doses.'
The New Delhi district authorities on Monday issued a show-cause notice to Etihad Airways for allegedly violating the Centre's guidelines for international passenger arrivals at the IGI airport here, amid concerns over the Omicron variant of coronavirus.
Cases with the Omicron variant have already been detected in Karnataka and Gujarat.
According to the NCDC, 415 cases of the UK strain of coronavirus were found in genomes sequenced in Delhi, followed by 23 cases of the South African strain.
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