'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.'
It is the second death due to this variant in Maharashtra as it had claimed the life of an 80-year-old woman from Ratnagiri district on June 13.
The CSIR DG said the transmissibility of the new strain N501Y is a "bit higher" but this does not mean it is more lethal and more people are going to die due to it.
Genome sequencing has confirmed that the nine people have been infected with the new variant, Health Secretary Vaibhav Galriya said.
The research would lead to a better understanding of metabolic reprogramming and aid the development of better therapeutics to deal with the viral pandemics, an institute spokesperson said on Wednesday.
According to some experts, there is not much difference in the number of seasonal flu cases and that of COVID-19, even though they stressed that surveillance for newer variants should continue in the off chance of a new lineage of coronavirus catching the country off guard.
The WHO said that studies have highlighted that the spread of the second wave has been much faster than the first in India.
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.
On Monday, the state had recorded 1,036 infections while Mumbai had reported 676 cases. It may be noted that generally fewer cases are recorded on Mondays as fewer tests are carried out during weekends.
The ministry said 151 out of the 578 people who contracted the infection have recovered or migrated.
In view of a spurt in coronavirus cases in the city, the Delhi government on Wednesday made wearing of masks mandatory in public places and imposed a fine of Rs 500 on violators.
'Unless some serious steps like complete closedown are taken, it will have disastrous consequences.'
The current Covid situation in India is under control and there are no reasons to panic, said Dr N K Arora, the chairperson of National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI).
The Centre had on Thursday asked all states and union territories to conduct rigorous screening and testing of all international travellers coming from or transiting through South Africa, Hong Kong and Botswana, where the B.1.1.529 variant has been detected.
The move came soon after Belgium confirmed a case of the B.1.1.529 variant in someone who had travelled back from Egypt earlier this month, with the European Union (EU) member states agreeing to a snap travel ban on seven African nations.
This was the maximum number of cases recorded in Delhi since February 10 when 1,104 infections were reported.
With the Omicron variant of coronavirus slowly spreading its tentacles in the country, a number of states enhanced surveillance to trace, track and quarantine contacts of COVID-19 positive persons while Delhi began genome sequencing of samples of all infected people and has prohibited Christmas and New Year gatherings.
'We have to ensure the European situation does not occur in India and we don't see a spread like theirs.'
Breakthrough infections of coronavirus cases comprise a very high proportion of the Delta variant, the INSACOG, a genome sequencing government consortium of laboratories, has said.
The UK's health authorities have confirmed that a new and "most significant" variant of COVID-19 is officially under investigation in the country as the government on Friday added six countries to its travel ban red list from southern Africa, where B.1.1.529 strain was first identified.
They include a woman who came from Nigeria along with her two daughters to meet her brother in adjoining Pimpri Chinchwad area, the official said.
For the first time in Maharashtra, four patients of B.A.4 sub-lineage and three cases of B.A.5 sub-lineage of the Omicron variant of coronavirus have been found, the state health department said on Saturday.
West Bengal on Wednesday reported its first Omicron case after a seven-year-old boy, resident of Murshidabad district, tested positive for the new coronavirus variant, a senior official of the health department said.
'Whether the substantial hybrid immunity present in India can protect against severe consequences of the disease remains to be seen.'
XE, the latest mutant of Omicron may be more transmissible than the previous ones, the World Health Organization has said.
Amid a rise in coronavirus cases and the threat of the Omicron variant, the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) on Wednesday directed district magistrates to ensure no Christmas and New Year gathering takes place in the national capital.
'We are not yet out of the woods.' 'If India sees the South African or Brazilian type of mutations, our numbers will rapidly rise.'
Mu -- also known by its scientific name as B.1.621 -- was first identified in Colombia in January 2021, and since then, there have been 'sporadic reports' of cases and some larger outbreaks in South America and Europe, the United Nations health agency said in its weekly bulletin on the pandemic on Tuesday.
A new variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus which cause COVID-19, has been detected in South Africa and many other countries globally which could be more transmissible and evade protection provided by vaccines, according to study.
Their samples have been sent to the National Centre for Disease Control for genome sequencing to ascertain if they have the new variant, Omicron, which has been classified as 'variant of concern' by the WHO.
In its weekly bulletin of December 27, released on Monday, the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) said global outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 are increasingly shifting from Delta to Omicron.
As many as 141 Mumbai residents who had not traveled abroad recently tested positive for the Omicron variant of coronavirus on Thursday, the civic body said.
As per the document, these 10 states are Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Mizoram, Karnataka, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Punjab.
'Viral infections rise in winter and better care needs to be taken in the next few months.'
Tope, however, stressed that there was no need to panic as the count of active cases in the state still stood below 1,000, while the number of cases per million in the state was far less than other states.
Delhi's R-value, which indicates the spread of COVID-19, was recorded at 2.1 this week, implying that every infected person is infecting two others in the national capital, according to an analysis by IIT-Madras.
'There is no emergency of a third wave that we are rushing for booster doses.'
We are entering 2022, facing another infectious variant, with much the same baseless confidence, notes Mihir S Sharma.
Instead of seven-day home quarantine as mandated earlier, all travellers will self-monitor their health for 14 days after their arrival.
Growth might be impacted by up to 0.30 per cent in the March quarter as normal economic activities come under pressure due to restrictions being imposed by more states to curb rising Omicron cases, economists at the country's largest private sector lender HDFC Bank said on Tuesday. The economists said they were earlier estimating Q4 growth to come at 6.1 per cent, which can get impacted by 0.2-0.3 per cent because of the Omicron threat. "With states imposing Covid-related restrictions (night curfew on movement of people, restaurants allowed at 50 per cent capacity, offices to operate at 50 per cent capacity in various states), economic activity is likely to get impacted in Q4FY22," they said.
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