Top Stories

200 omicron cases in India, 54 each for Maharashtra, Delhi

December 21, 2021
Bharat Times

The total number of Kovid cases reported in the country is now 3.48 crore.

New Delhi:

The Union Health Ministry said today that the number of cases of the rapidly spreading strain of Kovid, Omicron, has crossed the 200-mark in India.

Of them, 77 patients have been cured or migrated, the ministry said.

Maharashtra and Delhi have reported the highest number of cases of the new variant – 54. They are followed by Telangana (20 cases), Karnataka (19), Rajasthan (18), Kerala (15) and Gujarat (14).

The ministry’s data updated on Tuesday also recorded that India has seen 5,326 cases of Covid infections, the lowest daily number of cases in 581 days. The total number of Covid cases reported in the country now stands at 3.48 crore. According to the bulletin, there are now 79,097 active cases in the country, which is the lowest in 574 days.

With 453 deaths in the last 24 hours, the total death toll from the pandemic has gone up to 4.78 lakh.

The highly communicable Omicron strain of COVID has raised alarm bells and evoked grim memories of the devastating second wave of the pandemic that brought the country’s health infrastructure to its knees.

Delhi, which was worst affected in the second wave, saw 107 cases on Sunday, crossing the 100-mark after six months and prompting a meeting of disaster management officials.

After the meeting, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal urged people not to panic and assured that the government has made adequate arrangements to deal with the rise in cases. Pointing out that many people were not wearing masks and had let down their guard after the decline in cases, he urged the residents to follow the COVID norms

Meanwhile, the Omicron strain is causing an alarming increase in cases around the world.

In the US, the new version accounts for 73 per cent of all indexed Covid cases, up from around 3% last week, according to the latest federal estimates.

The delta variant, which was the dominant form of the virus in the US last week, has now accounted for about 27 percent of the sequenced cases.

The World Health Organization has said that the Omicron variant is spreading faster than the delta version and causing infections in people who have already been vaccinated or who have recovered from COVID.

,