New Delhi: The Union Health Ministry said on Tuesday that 200 cases of the Omicron variant of Coronavirus had been detected in India so far.
Out of them, 77 patients had recovered or migrated, the ministry added.
At 54, Maharashtra and Delhi have reported the highest number of cases of Omicron. Telangana has 20 cases, Karnataka 19, Rajasthan 18, Kerala 15 and Gujarat has 14 reported cases of the variant.
In Odisha, two Omicron cases have been confirmed so far. Two foreign returnees were found to have been infected with the variant following genomic sequencing of their samples.
The health ministry’s data said India clocked 5,326 cases of COVID infections over the past 24 hours, the lowest daily case count in the last almost 20 months (581 days). The total number of COVID cases reported in the country now stands at 3.48 crore. As per the bulletin released on Tuesday, there are now 79,097 active cases in the country, also the lowest in 574 days.
The daily rise in new Coronavirus infections has been recorded below 15,000 for the last 54 days now. The national COVID-19 recovery rate has also further improved to 98.40 per cent, the highest since March 2020, the ministry said.
The death toll in the pandemic has climbed to 4.78 lakh, with 453 reported deaths due to the infection in the last 24 hours.
The Omicron strain is known to be highly transmissible and is spreading rapidly across the globe, stocking fears of a possible third wave in India.
In the US, the new variant accounts for 73 per cent of all sequenced COVID cases, surging from around 3 per cent last week, according to the latest federal estimates. Twelve people in Britain have died with the Omicron variant so far.
The Delta variant, which had been the dominant form of the virus in the US last week, has now receded to roughly 27 per cent of sequenced cases.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said the Omicron variant is spreading faster than the Delta variant and is causing infections in people already vaccinated or who have recovered from COVID.
However, so far the strain has been found to be mild, with very less hospitalisation and deaths.
Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya has said that India is prepared to fight the Omicron cases. He said the vaccine manufacturing capacity of the country will be increased to 45 crore doses per month, which will provide protection against the virus.
He said that a buffer stock of medicine and oxygen had been prepared to mitigate any crisis and 48,000 ventilators had been distributed to states.
