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Underlining that India faces a phase of “anxiety” with the onset of winter, with people traveling and partying for Christmas and New Year celebrations, officials said that if the daily cases in such countries is extrapolated with reference to the population of India, then they would mean 14- 15 lakh cases in a day
“You know from information in the public domain that the situation has worsened in parts of Africa but also in parts of Europe,” NITI Aayog member-health Dr VK Paul stressed that epidemics spread rapidly, especially with variants such as Omicron.
“We have to make efforts so that such a situation does not come here,” he said. On the contrary, we have to be prepared to face such situation also effectively,” he said.
Paul highlighted the example of the UK, which reported more than 80,000 cases on Thursday despite high vaccination rates and exposure to Delta. “If a similar outbreak occurs in India, looking at our population, there will be 14 lakh cases every day. Similarly, France – where 80% is partial vaccination – is reporting 65,000 cases. If an outbreak of similar scale occurs in India, it would mean 13 lakh cases every day.
“While our new daily cases have remained below 10,000 for the past 20 days and the weekly positivity is less than 1% for a month, we still need to be vigilant, especially with reference to Omicron,” said the Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Health. In,” Luv Agarwal said.
Globally, it has been observed that the countries which are witnessing increase in the total cases of covid are also witnessing increase in the omicron infected cases. In addition, countries including South Africa, Norway, Canada and the UK are seeing huge growth, which are likely to be driven by the Omicron variant. Currently, 19 districts in the country are reporting weekly positivity rates between 5-10%, while five districts in Mizoram (4) and Arunachal Pradesh (1) together have more than 10% positivity.
ICMR Director General Dr Balram Bhargava advised districts with more than 5% positivity rate to implement local restrictions and measures till the rate is less than 5% or for at least two weeks.
The Center also urged people to take double doses of vaccines, wear masks properly, avoid mass gatherings and non-essential travel.
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