MUMBAI SETS UP ‘WAR ROOMS’ AS INDIA’S OMICRON INFECTIONS RISE
▶ Country identifies fourth person with Covid-19 variant, while police begin search for suspected missed cases
The authorities in Mumbai have set up “war rooms” to monitor potential carriers of the Omicron variant of coronavirus, after the country reported its fourth case yesterday.
The latest cases were reported in Maharashtra and Gujarat states.
Officials in Mumbai said a male passenger who arrived in the city from South Africa via New Delhi last week tested positive for the new strain.
The other case was reported in western Gujarat, in a 72-year-old man who travelled from Zimbabwe on Thursday.
The authorities have tracked all their contacts and are monitoring their health, officials said.
Police have begun searching for missing suspected cases.
Mumbai, the city hit worst by the Covid-19 pandemic, opened the war rooms in each of its districts, or wards, to keep a check on hundreds of travellers from at-risk countries as they undergo mandatory home quarantine.
Officials are making visits to monitor their health and are calling them several times a day to ensure that they remain isolated.
Those who breach quarantine measures will face criminal charges.
“Mumbai has a high density of population and is very crowded … we can’t take any risks,” Deputy Mayor Suhas Wadkar told The National.
“We have to be very cautious. We have decided to restart the ward war rooms so we can monitor those in quarantine.
“The war room staff will make calls every two hours to these travellers, five times a day.
“If they need anything, they can inform us.”
Mumbai has recorded nearly 7.6 million cases and 16,000 deaths since the pandemic hit the country in January 2020. Infection rates have dropped in recent months, with health officials reporting 68 new Covid-19 cases yesterday.
But the threat of the new strain has prompted the authorities to strengthen measures to tackle the spread of the virus.
India recently tightened its rules for all international arrivals and made testing and home quarantine mandatory for passengers from countries where the new strain has been detected.
More than 20,000 passengers have been tested across dozens of airports since the new rules came into effect on Wednesday.
Omicron has spread to about
More than 12 people were admitted to a hospital in Delhi as the authorities await the results of tests for Omicron
40 countries since it was first reported in South Africa last month.
In Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital, at least 288 samples from travellers have been sent for genome sequencing to check for the presence of the Omicron variant.
More than 12 Covid-19 cases were admitted to a government hospital in Delhi as authorities await the results of tests for Omicron.
Another dozen cases were being monitored in northern Chandigarh city.
Mumbai’s stringent monitoring system was put in place after nearly two dozen suspected cases, including travellers from South Africa and Botswana, dodged quarantine in northern Uttar Pradesh and southern Karnataka states by furnishing incorrect addresses and disappearing after their arrival at the airports.
India reported its first two cases of Omicron in Karnataka’s Bengaluru city on Thursday, a vaccinated doctor with no travel history and a South African with a negative Covid-19 report.
The detection of Omicron cases has caused alarm across the country, with authorities urging people to follow rules on wearing face masks and to avoid crowded places.
The government has also asked states to increase testing and vaccination to curb the spread of the new strain, which is believed to be more infectious than the Delta variant that tore through the country during the second wave in April and May.
The Health Ministry yesterday wrote to six states, including southern Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, where weekly positivity rates have been on the rise, to step up the test-track-treat-vaccinate strategy.
Experts, however, said the government was overreacting to the situation because the majority of people in the country were covered by a combination of herd immunity and vaccination.
“For a setting like India where there is a high vaccine coverage and seroprevalence, the impact of the new variant is likely to be very minor, so we should not be overreacting to finding a case,” Chandrakant Lahariya, an independent virologist in Delhi, told The National.
He said the government should instead focus on increasing vaccinations, which help reduce severe disease, admissions to hospital and mortality.
“An individual who gets vaccinated can still get infected with Omicron, but the impact would be less for all of the variants and that’s why people should be vaccinated,” he said.