After 1st case, Jain presses for Centre to stop flights from Omicron-hit nations

New Delhi: With the first case of the Omicron variant of Covid being found in the Capital, health officials are now on overdrive in contact tracing activities — testing all passengers fervently who are coming into the country from any of the affected countries, a senior official from the health department said.

Delhi's Health Minister Satyendar Jain said that so far, 17 Covid positive cases have been found at the airport and all the patients have been admitted to Lok Nayak Hospital as well as the patient who was found to be positive for the Omicron variant. Along with that, 6 people who have come in direct contact with the positive 17 cases have also been admitted to the isolation ward and are under observation, the Minister said.

The Omicron case was detected after all 17 patients' samples were genome sequenced. The results of five of these patients are awaited, the minister said, appealing to the people not to panic as this was just a variant of the Coronavirus with symptoms mostly the same as previous variants.

"Seeing the cases of Corona decreasing, people were not following COVID-19 appropriate behaviour but now is the time when you need to be more careful. People who have not yet taken the vaccine should get vaccinated as soon as possible," Jain said.

Jain said that there is a 99 percent chance that the mask can save people from all COVID-19 variants, be it Alpha, Beta, Delta or Omicron. Experts have been saying that the third wave of COVID-19 can hit the country in January-February. It can be prevented if everybody wears a mask, he said.

The State government has established 40 isolation wards in LNJP Hospital, with an additional 500 beds ready to go if needed as a precautionary measure in cases Covid cases surge again as the Health Minister insisted that the Delhi government was prepared to deal with a surge if it came.

But even as fervent contact tracing activities are on, Jain said that the Centre must heed CM Arvind Kejriwal's advice and immediately stop international flights from countries that have detected Omicron cases, saying that Delhi has to bear an unfair burden until this is done.

"Delhi receives the maximum number of flights from abroad, so Delhi is most at risk from this. The Central government should accept the demand of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and flights coming from all the countries affected by the Omicron variant should be banned at the earliest," Jain said.

It is being reported that the gestational period in case of Omicron could be more than other variants. This means an infected person may go undetected at the airport. All the cases have come from affected foreign countries. The central government should take it seriously, he said.

Meanwhile, the authorities in Delhi reported 63 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday and zero deaths from the virus. Fresh cases have been increasing ever so slightly — with the daily positivity rate breaching the 0.1 per cent mark for the first time in weeks on Sunday. With pti inputs