Omicron Has Spread To All Odisha Districts, Cases To Rise In Coming Days: Senior Health Official

Bhubaneswar: Omicron has spread its tentacles to all districts of Odisha and the infections will rise further in the coming days, Director, Health Services, Bijay Mohapatra informed on Thursday.

“Khurda had been a concern, the number of cases is also increasing in Sundaragarh, Sambalpur and Balasore,” he said.

The senior health official said that the focus is on testing, vaccination and surveillance. “The bed occupant rate is low and therefore, it is not a cause of concern as no severity has been detected so far. There is also a provision to increase the number of beds,” he said.

Mohapatra said that the ICMR has given permission to use new kits for Omicron testing and the state government has begun the process to avail these.

Also Read: ICMR Nod For Made-In-India Kit ‘OmiSure’ To Detect Omicron

“Genome sequencing of samples is done in cases of clusters and where the positivity rate is high to detect the variant,” he said while answering queries of mediapersons.

The treatment for all these cases is the same, he said.

“Senior citizens and health workers will be administered precaution dose from January 10. They will be inoculated with the same vaccine, which they had received in past,” he added.

He further urged the people to follow the guidelines issued by the Special Relief Commissioner to break the infection chain.

Notably, the Omicron tally in Odisha had touched 61 on Wednesday with 24 more samples testing positive for this variant of COVID-19.

The cases were detected from 218 samples sent for genome sequencing. Five among them had international travel history, while the remaining 19 were local contacts, Institute of Life Sciences director Ajay Parida had informed.

Also Read: Omicron Tally Surges To 61 In Odisha; Majority Local Contacts

Of the 23 cases detected earlier, seven cases were from Keonjhar district, four from Khurda, three each from Puri and Sambalpur, two each from Boudh and Angul and one each from Jagatsinghpur and Balasore.

On December 21 two cases of Omicron were detected in Odisha for the first time, another two were detected on December 23, four on December 26, one on December 29, five on December 30 and 23 on January 2.

Meanwhile, five patients have recovered from the infection. A woman and her two daughters, who had tested positive for Omicron after returning from Nigeria, were discharged from SUM COVID Hospital here after 14-day treatment.

Also Read: 3 Nigeria Returnees Afflicted With Omicron Recover After 14-Day Treatment At SUM