Omicron variant updates, COVID-19 news in India - 25 cases of new variant reported

As per the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare India recorded 8,503 new cases in the last 24 hours. Omicron, a new variant of SARS-CoV-2, has caught the attention of the government as the World Health Organisation (WHO) has termed it as a variant of concern. According to Manindra Agarwal, IIT scientist involved in the mathematical projection of trajectory of COVID-19, the third wave of coronavirus could hit the peak by February with cases likely to be reaching up to 1-1.5 lakh a day due to Omicron. However, it will be milder than the second wave, he told to PTI.

See Zee Business Live TV Streaming Below:

“With the new variant, our current forecast is that the country could see the third wave by February but it will be milder than the second wave. So far, we have seen that the severity of Omicron is not like the one seen in the Delta variant,” PTI said in a report quoting Agarwal.

On Wednesday, Maharashtra's first patient of the Omicron variant of coronavirus, who resides in Thane district was discharged, as per PTI.

Here are the updates from India:

4.35 PM: According to the government, 25 cases of Omicron variant reported in India - nine in Rajasthan, three in Gujarat, ten in Maharashtra, two in Karnataka, one in Delhi. 

2.13 PM: The Centre has allotted five genome sequencing machines to Madhya Pradesh, where no case of Omicron, a new variant of coronavirus, has been detected so far, state minister Vishwas Sarang said on Friday, as per PTI. 
The allotment has come a day after the state medical education minister met Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya in Delhi.
The five machines will be installed at Bhopal, Indore, Jabalpur, Rewa and Gwalior cities. At present, the samples collected in Madhya Pradesh are being sent to Delhi for genome sequencing, and it takes over 10 days to get reports," Sarang said.
These machines with help shorten the detection time considerably, he said.
The minister further said that the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry has accepted the state government's demand for a special package to ramp up six government medical colleges and funds for the upkeep of nursing colleges in the state.
The Centre has also given a nod for setting up a new super-speciality hospital in Bhopal, he added.
According to the state health department, a total of 7,93,307 cases of COVID-19 have been detected in the state so far, including 10,529 casualties.

1.34 PM: Twenty-four more people tested positive for COVID-19 in Ladakh, bringing the infection tally to 21,773, while the number of active cases in the Union Territory has reached 237, officials told to PTI.
Ladakh has recorded 215 coronavirus-related deaths -- 157 in Leh and 58 in Kargil -- since the outbreak of the pandemic last year, they said.
Seventeen patients were discharged from hospitals in Leh after they recovered from the infection. The count of COVID-19 recoveries now stands at 21,321 in the UT, they said.
All 24 new cases were reported in Leh, the officials said.
A total of 1,131 samples tested negative for COVID-19 in the last 24 hours in Ladakh, they said.
Leh has 221 active coronavirus cases, while Kargil district has 16 such infections. 

1.20 PM:  A woman contact of an Omicron case in Rajasthan has been found COVID-19 positive in Delhi and is being shifted to the Lok Nayak Hospital, officials said on Friday, as per a PTI report. 
The woman tested Covid positive on Thursday. She did not travel to any foreign country. 17 members in her family have been also put under home quarantine, an official said.
She is being taken to the LNJP Hospital and her sample has been sent for genome sequencing to the National Centre for Disease Control, the official said, adding her contacts are being traced.
Delhi had reported its first case of Omicron on Sunday -- a 37-year-old fully vaccinated man who arrived in Delhi from Tanzania.
The patient, a resident of Ranchi, had travelled from Tanzania to Doha and from there to Delhi on a Qatar Airways flight on December 2. He stayed in Johannesburg, South Africa, for a week. The person has ?mild symptoms?.
The results of 12 out of 17 samples sent for genome sequencing were released on Sunday. Eleven of them tested negative. 

9.45 AM: There have been 7,678 recoveries in the last 24 hours increasing the total recoveries to 3,41,05,066. India's active caseload stands at 94,943. The active cases account for less than 1 per cent of the total cases.

9.44 AM: 131.18 crore vaccine doses have been administered so far under Nationwide Vaccination Drive

9.18 AM: As per PTI, Maharashtra's Thane district has recorded 111 new coronavirus cases, taking its overall count to 5,70,288, while two more patients have succumbed to the infection, an official said on Friday.
The new cases and fatalities were reported on Thursday, he said. The death toll in the district increased to 11,592, the official said, adding the coronavirus mortality rate stood at 2.03 per cent.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified a new variant of SARS-CoV-2. It has been named as Omicron. The Technical Advisory Group on SARS-CoV-2 Virus Evolution (TAG-VE) is an independent group of experts that periodically monitors and evaluates the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 and assesses if specific mutations and combinations of mutations alter the behaviour of the virus, WHO has informed.

The B.1.1.529 variant was first reported to WHO from South Africa on 24th November 2021. The epidemiological situation in South Africa has been characterized by three distinct peaks in reported cases, the latest of which was predominantly the Delta variant.

It has to be noted that India's COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 2020, 30 lakhs on August 23, 40 lakhs on September 5 and 50 lakhs on September 16. It went past 60 lakhs on September 28, 70 lakhs on October 11, crossed 80 lakhs on October 29, 90 lakhs on November 20 and surpassed the one-crore mark on December 19. India crossed the grim milestone of two crore on May 4 and three crores on June 2.