In a major spike in the number of Omicron cases in India, Maharashtra on Thursday recorded 198 new Omicron cases, taking the Omicron tally of the state to 450. Out of these 198 cases, 190 have been reported from Mumbai alone. This comes on a day Maharashtra reported 5,368 fresh Covid cases, including 3,671 from Mumbai as reported by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.
Maharashtra health minister Rajesh Tope on Thursday said with around 4,000 cases, Mumbai's case positivity rate has increased to 8.48%. The alarming spread of Omicron remains unabated in the state and keeping this is mind, the government has decided to use S-gene dropout kit maximum to identify Delta and Omicron at RT-PCR centres only, before genome-sequencing. This will help the doctors to differentiate between Omicron and Delta variants, the minister said.
"Vaccination drives will be done at full speed. School students should be taken in batched to vaccination centres. This will result in a high rate of vaccination. Schools will not be closed as of now," Rajesh Tope said.
Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray held an emergency meeting of the Maharashtra Covid task force on Thursday in view of the sudden increase in the number of cases. The government has already imposed several restrictions curbing New Year festivities in the state. The Mumbai Police on Thursday has imposed Section 144 in the city starting from today till January 7. As per the new Covid-19 restrictions, prohibition has been placed on New Year's celebrations, parties in any closed or open space including restaurants, hotels, bars, pubs, resorts and clubs from December 30 to January 7.
Mumbai mayor Kishori Pednekar said the new wave of the coronavirus pandemic could be worse than the earlier two waves as she appealed to people to follow the norms. "Earlier variants of the coronavirus infected mostly adults, but the latest variant is also infecting children, she said. "Hence it is necessary to be careful,” Pednekar said.
{{/usCountry}}Mumbai mayor Kishori Pednekar said the new wave of the coronavirus pandemic could be worse than the earlier two waves as she appealed to people to follow the norms. "Earlier variants of the coronavirus infected mostly adults, but the latest variant is also infecting children, she said. "Hence it is necessary to be careful,” Pednekar said.
{{/usCountry}}Maharashtra on Thursday recorded 22 death including a 52-year-old man with a travel history to Nigeria. Maharashtra health department said the man died of a heart attack on December 29 and the death was due to non-Covid reasons. After his samples were sent for genome sequencing, it has been found that he was infected with Omicron variant.
The Union health ministry on Thursday expressed concern over the emerging situation and asked people to not panic as India is well prepared to fight any surge. Maharashtra is one of the eight states which were alerted by the Centre once again on Thursday.