'No night curfew restrictions in HP, Covid appropriate behaviour must'

Shimla: Himachal Pradesh on Wednesday said there is no immediate proposal to impose night curfew in the state as some of the state governments have done in view of the omicron threat but clarified that all tourists coming to the state must follow covid appropriate behavior.

"The Covid situation in the state is not at all alarming but we are alert in view of the new variant. One omicron case, a foreign returnee, has been reported but the 45-year old woman from Mandi has recovered and tested negative now," said a senior official of the state's health department.

The state has already achieved 100 percent vaccination of the two doses and active Covid cases number is only 358 in the state thus the state government has taken a decision not to impose any restrictions in view of the tourists season.

Most hotels in Shimla and Manali, beside other hill stations are packed though the MeT department has not forecasted snowfall on December 31. The increased footfall has certainly caused alarms. So, the district administrations in Shimla, Kangra, Kullu, Solan and Chamba have been asked to keep a close vigil and strictly enforce the guidelines like wearing of masks and social distancing.

The state's health department has also advised the DCs to keep all foreign returnees under close surveillance for the omicron as per directions of the central government.

As per the list shared by Government of India, 2266 International passengers have arrived in the state from November 20 2021 till now.

Of these, only 1,911 passengers were eligible for RTPCR testing while remaining 355 were not eligible for testing as some of them were untraceable, some have completed 14 days of home isolation, others returned back to abroad and few are staying out of State.

The RTPCR tests of 1,078 passengers were on the 8th day after arrival or appearance of covid symptoms, said a spokeswoman.

Ten samples were found positive and these were sent for whole genome sequencing (WGS) to NCDC Delhi for the final confirmation of the virus. Out of these 10 samples sent, one sample was found positive for omicron variant on December 26, 2021 and two samples have been found positive for the delta variant as on December 29, 2021.

The positive case of omicron was a 45 years old female from district Mandi with a travel history from Canada and have received both doses of COVID vaccine.

The other two positive cases of delta variant are a 32 years old female from District Mandi and a 26 years old male from District Hamirpur respectively. They have a travel history from Estonia and Russia and both are asymptomatic. He added that a 32 years old female from Mandi has received both doses of COVID vaccine while a 26 years old male from Hamirpur is not vaccinated.