Omicron concerns: BMC to ramp up testing, puts health infra on high alert

Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Monday alerted all its ward war rooms, hospitals and jumbo centres amidst rising concerns over the Omicron variant of Covid-19

Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Monday alerted all its ward war rooms, hospitals and jumbo centres amidst rising concerns over the Omicron variant of Covid-19.

BMC has put all its health infra on high alert after Omicron concerns in Mumbai. (HT file)

Municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal directed officials to ramp up daily testing to 50k samples, arrange hotels and jumbo centres to quarantine Covid-19 patients arriving from at-risk countries.

Maharashtra environment and tourism minister and the guardian minister of Mumbai suburbs, Aaditya Thackeray held a review meeting with BMC officials on Monday asking them to stay on alert.

Thackeray took to social media to inform, “Mumbai’s first dose is 100% complete and second dose is 72% done. We would be requesting the union government to reduce the gap between two doses, without altering our vaccine delivery schedule, so that we can complete 100% of the second dose for Mumbai by mid-January.” Thackeray urged, “Vaccines and masks are extremely crucial for Covid appropriate behaviour.”

BMC has collected samples of those arriving from at-risk nations that include South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique and some Middle Eastern and European countries.

Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner, BMC said, “There are no cases of Omicron variant yet in Mumbai. In the last 15 days, we have got data of 466 people from Maharashtra arriving from ‘countries of concern’. Of these, 100 are from Mumbai and none of them is tested positive for Covid-19. We have taken their samples again on Monday and reports will be out by Wednesday.”

Kakani assured, “In case any samples are positive, we will send them for genomic sequencing. The next 15 days are going to be crucial.”

Currently, all passengers arriving from international destinations that are on the list of ‘countries of concern’ will mandatorily undergo RT-PCR test at the airport. If they are tested positive, they will have to be quarantined institutionally and their samples will be sent to a genomic sequencing lab, said civic officials.

Additionally, the BMC is also arranging for hotels ranging from two stars to five stars, where citizens can be quarantined. Richardson and Cruddas campus, located at Byculla is being kept ready by the BMC to accommodate flyers who need to be institutionally quarantined but are unable to pay for the same.

BMC officials on Monday also said that primary schools in the city will reopen from December 01, 2021, as per the announcement of the state government and there will be no impact on the reopening of primary schools due to the outbreak of the omicron variant.

Starting Wednesday, BMC is also launching another campaign to ensure all private and public offices have fully vaccinated employees. They will launch vaccination campaigns in areas where people are not fully vaccinated.