India In Third Wave, 75% Cases In Metros Are Omicron: COVID Task Force Chief

New Delhi: The third wave of COVID-19 has started in the country, Dr NK Arora, the head of the country’s vaccine task force, told NDTV on Monday.

According to him, 75 per cent of COVID-19 cases in metros like Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata were of the Omicron variant.

“Look at whatever the variants have been genome sequenced… We got our first virus right in the first week of December. So, last week, nationally overall, 12 per cent of the variants identified were Omicron and the week gone by in the previous week, it has increased to 28 per cent. So, it is rapidly increasing as a proportion of all the COVID infections in the country. Now, having said that, I must also say something more important and that is that around the major metro cities, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and particularly Delhi, it is over 75 per cent of all the isolates now,” Dr Arora told NDTV.

“India is clearly in the third wave of COVID-19. And the whole wave seems to be driven by a new variant and today it is Omicron,” he said.

He also said that Covaxin was absolutely safe for children in the 15-18 age group.