Omicron variant: COVID-19 `third wave' seems to be waning, says Maharashtra health minister

The "third wave" of the coronavirus pandemic seems to be declining in the state though in some cities cases are showing an uptick, Maharashtra health minister Rajesh Tope said on Saturday. The state reported 27,971 new coronavirus cases and 61 pandemic-related deaths during the day. With the count of new daily cases dropping from the peak of 47,000 to about 25,000, "it seems the COVID-19 third wave has come down," Tope told reporters here. "But some other cities like Pune, Nagpur and parts of rural area are reporting more and more cases,” the minister noted. Mumbai, Thane, Raigad and Palghar districts were reporting "very high numbers" earlier while Nashik, Nagpur, Pune and Aurangabad are currently reporting more cases, Tope said."People are generally getting discharged within seven-eight days even if they have mild symptoms,” he said.

Karnataka recorded 33,337 new cases, 70 deaths 

Bengal registerd 3,512 new COVID cases, 35 fresh fatalities

Himachal Pradesh reported 1,714 fresh COVID cases, 8 deaths

Odisha's COVID-19 tally rose to 12,41,068 on Saturday as 4,842 people tested positive for the infection, 215 less than the previous day; while 15 fresh fatalities, the highest daily spike in deaths in nearly five months, pushed the state's toll to 8,575, a health bulletin said. 
The daily spike in new cases was the lowest since January 11, and it plunged by 45 per cent from 8,845 a week ago. The state had registered 5,057 cases and 10 fatalities on Friday. Khurda district, where Bhubaneswar is located, reported 1,253 infections, followed by 443 in Cuttack. As many as 671 children are among the new patients.

Kerala logged 50,812 new infections and eight COVID-19-related deaths on Saturday, taking the infection count to 59,31,945 and the death toll to 53,191. According to the health department, 47,649 persons recuperated from the disease, pushing the number of total cured to 55,41,834. The state has tested 1,10,970 samples in the last 24 hours and there are 3,36,202 active COVID-19 cases in the state, the department said. 

Delhi on Saturday reported 4,483 fresh COVID-19 cases, a positivity rate of 7.41 per cent and 28 deaths, according to data shared by the city health department. With this, the national capital's case count ihas increased to 18,23,815 and the death toll to 25,797, the latest health bulletin stated. The number of COVID-19 tests conducted a day ago was 60,532, it said.

The number of COVID-19 cases reported in Delhi has reduced significantly in the last one week from over 11,000 cases logged on January 22, but the containment zones count remains over 40,000, according to official data. A containment zone is created by authorities to check the spread of infection if at least three cases of coronavirus are recorded in a household or in a neighbourhood.

The surge in Covid cases in Delhi during the third wave of the pandemic are due to the Omicron variant of the virus which is highly transmissible. Many families in a large number of neighbourhoods had tested positive, but medical experts have said that since the infection had happened at the same time, the recovery too will be quicker for the community as a whole, and there is less chance of more spread of infection as people are largely home isolated with a very little number of patients needing hospitalisation this time. According to official data shared by the Delhi health department, the number of containment zones in the city stood at 41,095 on Friday, a fall from 42,388 on Thursday.

Chinese are travelling to their hometowns for the Lunar New Year, the country's biggest family holiday, despite a government plea to stay where they are as Beijing tries to contain coronavirus outbreaks. The holiday, which starts with Chinese New Year's Eve on Monday, usually is the biggest annual movement of humanity as hundreds of millions of people who migrated for work visit their parents and sometimes spouses and children they left behind or travel abroad.

Andhra Pradesh’s Covid-19 tally went up to 22,60,181 as 11,573 fresh cases were reported in 24 hours ending 9 AM on Saturday. The total recoveries increased to 21,30,162 after 9,445 more people got cured of the infection, a bulletin said. The overall toll rose to 14,594 with three more deaths today, the bulletin said. The active case count climbed to 1,15,425.

Tripura | All schools & Madrassas in the State (pre-primary to 12th class) are allowed to function normally with strict maintenance of COVID 19 from 31st January. 

The Karnataka government on Saturday decided to lift the night curfew and start regular classes for Classes 1 to 9 from January 31. It also decided to continue with the mandatory RT-PCR tests for passengers coming from Maharashtra, Kerala and Goa.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has validated the COVID-19 rapid antigen test kit developed by a private company in Odisha. The kit has been developed by IMGENEX India Pvt Ltd, Bhubaneswar with intellectual input from Regional Medical Research Centre (RMRC). The kit can detect various variants of COVID-19 by using nasopharyngeal swab samples. RMRC director Dr Sanghamitra Pati said: “The IMGENEX India Pvt Ltd, Bhubaneswar first started developing the kit and RMRC Bhubaneswar provided intellectual support for in-house testing and validation.Subsequently, we submitted the proposal for approval.” She said the kit ImCOV-Ag has very high sensitivity and specificity and can detect all variants of COVID-19. The ICMR has approved the test kits based on the RMRC’s internal validation and a third party’s (an expert group from Kerala) report on efficacy and accuracy. IMGENEX, CEO, Dr Sujay Singh said they started work on the kit in June 2021 and ICMR has approved it on Thursday following certain procedures. He said with existing facilities, the firm can manufacture 2 lakh kits which can be ramped up to 20 lakh kits per month. Singh said that the kit is likely to be available in the market in two months.
 

The Delhi Gym Association on Saturday requested the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) and the Union Territory government to open gyms at 50 per cent capacity for people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, stating that the same has been done by West Bengal, Haryana, and Maharashtra governments.Hundreds of people associated with the gyms carried out a protest march near the Chief Minister's residence in civil lines and raised their grievances.

Germany has kept control over the Covid-19 pandemic situation despite the latest outbreak caused by the new Omicron variant, Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach said. "We had expected high case numbers," said Lauterbach, stressing that the current numbers are below those predicted by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases, reports Xinhua news agency. However, Germany's seven-day Covid-19 incidence rate has continued to surge, hitting a new record of 1,073 infections per 100,000 inhabitants on Friday. The previous day, the number had stood at 1,017.4, RKI reported. On Friday, 190,148 new cases were registered, around 50,000 more than a week ago. The day before, daily infections hit 200,000 for the first time. "Case numbers continue to rise massively, but in fact they are rising nowhere near as sharply as they could under Omicron," said RKI President Lothar Wieler.

The incidence of coronavirus cases and occupancy rate of hospital beds in Italy have both decreased, the latest data showed. According to the weekly report carried out by the National Institute of Health (ISS) across the 20 Italian regions, the Covid-19 incidence rate dropped to 1,823 cases per 100,000 inhabitants between January 21-27, compared to 2,011 cases in the previous week, reports Xinhua news agency. The report also showed that the country's average reproduction number (RT) between January 5-18 fell to 0.97, which is "below the pandemic threshold", the ISS noted. An RT below 1 indicates that one infectious person would on average transmit the infection to less than one other person. In the previous period (December 29, 2021 - January 11, 2022), the RT was 1.31. Pressure on the national health system is also decreasing, with the rate of occupancy of hospital beds by Covid-19 patients on ordinary wards dropping to 30.4 per cent from 31.6 per cent. Meanwhile, the rate in intensive care units fell to 16.7 per cent, from 17.3 per cent in the previous survey. The new data supports an announcement made by Italy's Covid emergency commissioner Francesco Paolo Figliuolo earlier this week. "We have good news: it seems we have reached the plateau of the curve for the Omicron variant... We are going downward," he said.

Puducherry confirmed 855 fresh cases of Covid-19 on Saturday taking the overall case count to 1,59,824. The new cases identified at the end of examination of 3,465 samples were spread over Puducherry 570, Karaikal 172, Yanam 102 and Mahe 11. The active cases were 12,542 of whom 182 were in hospitals taking treatment while the remaining 12,360 patients were in home quarantine, Director of Health G Sriramulu said. He said 2,604 patients recovered and were discharged during last twenty-four hours. The overall recoveries stood at 1,45,359. Two more patients (one each from Puducherry and Karaikal regions) succumbed to the infection during last twenty-four hours taking the overall toll to 1923. Sriramulu said the Department of Health has tested so far 21,53,519 samples and has found 18, 06, 515 out of them to be negative.

The BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron is 1.5 times more transmissible than the original Omicron strain, according to a study led by Danish researchers. Omicron, which is also referred to as B.1.1.529, has three main substrains, BA.1, BA.2, and BA.3, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Researchers at Denmark's Statens Serum Institut (SSI) found that BA.2 appeared to be one and a half times more contagious than BA.1, Newsweek reported. "Of course, we follow the development closely, and if BA.2 is more contagious, it may mean that the wave of infections will be higher and will extend further into February compared to the previous projections," Tyra Grove Krause, an infection epidemiology expert at SSI, was quoted as saying. The subvariant BA.2, dubbed with the moniker "Stealth Omicron", is rising around the world with at least 55 countries, including India, reporting cases to a global variant tracking database. The database also showed that nearly half of US states have confirmed the presence of BA.2 with at least 127 known cases nationwide as of Friday, CNBC reported. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a statement Friday, said although BA.2 has increased in proportion to the original Omicron strain in some countries, it is currently circulating at a low level in the US.

Jammu & Kashmir: Shops closed in Srinagar as complete restrictions imposed on non-essential movements during the weekend, to curb COVID-19 spread.

Single-day recoveries outnumbered fresh COVID-19 cases in Arunachal Pradesh as 515 more people recuperated from the disease in the last 24 hours, while 380 new infections were reported, a health department official said on Saturday. The fresh cases pushed the COVID-19 tally in the northeastern state to 61,627, he said. The state on Friday had registered 455 fresh infections. Altogether, 58,145 people have recovered from the disease so far, State Surveillance Officer (SSO) Dr Lobsang Jampa said. The COVID-19 recovery rate currently is 94.35 per cent, he said. The COVID-19 death toll in the frontier state remained at 285 as no fresh fatality due to the infection was reported in the last 24 hours, the SSO said. Of the 380 new cases, 147 were registered in the Capital Complex Region, 26 in Namsai, Lower Subansiri (24), Lohit (20), Lower Dibang Valley (19) and East Kameng reported 15 fresh cases, the official said. Two personnel of NDRF and four officials of Border Roads Organisation (BRO) were among the new patients, he said.

The union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands reported more COVID-19 recoveries than fresh cases, as 95 patients recuperated from the disease while 66 fresh infections pushed the tally to 9,690, a health official said on Saturday. Of the 66 new cases, 65 were detected during contact tracing and one during testing at Airport, he said. The archipelago now has 475 active COVID-19 cases while 9,086 people have recovered from the disease including 95 in the last 24 hours, the official said. The COVID-19 death toll remained at 129 as no fresh fatality was reported in the last 24 hours, he said. The union territory had reported 19 new COVID-19 cases and 60 recoveries on Friday. The administration has so far tested 6,83,204 samples for COVID-19 and the cumulative test positivity rate is 1.42 per cent. A total of 6,03,755 beneficiaries have been inoculated with COVID-19 vaccine, of whom 3,04,189 have received first dose and 2,99,566 have received both doses of the vaccine, the official added.

Odisha reported 15 more COVID-19 fatalities on Saturday, the highest in nearly five months, while single-day infections dipped to 4,842, the health department said in a bulletin. The death toll mounted to 8,575 and the coronavirus tally rose to 12,41,068, it said. Khurda district, where state capital Bhubaneswar is located, registered 1,253 new infections and three fatalities. Odisha had logged 5,057 fresh cases and 10 deaths on Friday. The coastal state now has 58,533 active cases, and 11,73,907 patients have recovered from the disease so far, including 10,511 since Friday, the bulletin said. It tested 63,871 samples for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours at a positivity rate of 7.58 per cent.

Singapore has recently reported 198 cases of COVID-19 traced to the BA.2 Omicron sub-lineage, which appears to be more infectious than the more common BA.1, but hospitals are coping well in spite of the current wave infecting thousands of people daily, according to reports. A total of 150 BA.2 cases were imported infections and the remaining 48 were local cases since January 25, 2022, the TODAY newspaper reported. Investigations into the characteristics of BA.2, including immune escape properties and virulence, should be prioritised independently (and comparatively) to BA.1, said the World Health Organisation (WHO). The BA.2 Omicron sub-lineage differs from BA.1 in some of the mutations, including in the spike protein, the WHO wrote on its website. The BA.2 sub-lineage has been detected in more than 50 countries, most notably in Denmark and the UK as of Friday. Meanwhile, Singapore reported 5,554 new COVID-19 cases, including 282 imported infections, and three deaths as of noon on Friday. Singapore has so far recorded 338,625 cases since the start of the pandemic. The figure is backdated to January 6 when general practitioners started to report Protocol 2.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Saturday stated that India has administered more than 56 lakh doses of COVID-19 vaccine in the last 24 hours with this India's COVID-19 vaccination coverage has exceeded 165.04 crores. India administered a total of 56,72,766 vaccine doses through 1,80,50,126 vaccination sessions in the last 24 hours, stated the official Health Ministry release today. Meanwhile, India has reported 2,35,532 new COVID-19 cases and 871 deaths in the last 24 hours. The daily positivity rate stands at 13.39 per cent as against Friday's 15.88 per cent. As per government data, the total actives cases in India is 20,04,333. However, the recovery rate currently stands at 93.89 per cent.As many as 17,59,434 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours, informed the Health Ministry. 

Japan will further reduce the quarantine period from the current 10 days to seven days for people who came in close contact with someone infected with Covid-19, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said. The decision was made amid the "sixth wave" of infections across the country due to the highly transmissible Omicron variant, reports Xinhua news agency. On Friday, Japan logged 81,811 new cases, with Tokyo alone reporting 17,631, once again setting new records. Kishida said the decision was made in light of "expert opinions and new scientific evidence", adding that Japan needs to strike a balance between curbing infections and maintaining functions in the society. The quarantine days for essential workers in the area of medical treatment, police, child care and nursing care, meanwhile, will be reduced from the current six days to five days through using a combination of two Covid-19 tests, he said. On January 14, the Japanese government reduced the quarantine period from 14 days to 10 days, but the business community among others asked for further shortening, in light of the new variant's characteristics. According to Japan's National Institute of Infectious Diseases, the possibility of developing symptoms from Omicron is less than 1 per cent on the 10th day after having contact with the virus, compared with 5 per cent on the seventh day.

With 2,35,532 people testing positive for the coronavirus infection in a day, India's total tally of cases increased to over 4.08 crore, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Saturday. The death toll has climbed to 4,93,198 with 871 fatalities reported during the 24-hour period, the data updated at 8 am showed. The active cases decreased by 1,01,278  to reach 20,04,333- 4.91 per cent of the total infections -- while the country's recovery rate stands at 93.89 per cent, the ministry said. The daily positivity rate was recorded at 13.39 per cent, while the weekly positivity rate was 16.89 per cent, according to the health ministry. The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 3,83,60,710, while the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.21 per cent, the ministry said. After the Saturday update, the total number of infections stands at 4,08,58,241, it said. Meanwhile, the cumulative number of anti-Covid vaccine doses administered in the country so far has crossed 165.04 crore. India's surpassed the one-crore mark in the number of cases on December 19, 2020. It crossed the grim milestone of two crore on May 4 and three crore on June 23.

Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai will on Saturday chair an expert committee meeting to take a final call on lifting of Covid-19 restrictions in Karnataka. According to sources, the meeting will deliberate on reopening of schools, cap on 50 per occupation in theatres, pubs, bars, hotels and restaurants as well as the night curfew. Though the number of new Covid cases are higher in Bengaluru, quick recoveries which are exceeding the number of positive cases, may pave the way for lifting of curbs with few restrictions. Karnataka has logged 31,198 new Covid cases against 71,092 discharges on Friday. Bengaluru Urban district recorded 15,199 positive cases on a single day against 44,866 discharges. Fifty deaths have been reported on a single day. Positivity for the day stood at 20.91 per cent and case fatality rate for the day stood at 0.16 per cent. The Karnataka government had lifted the weekend curfew last week and announced that a decision on reopening of schools will be announced on Saturday. CM Bommai is under pressure from the business community to lift the night curfew. They want the government to let them operate till 11 p.m. Film industry is hoping that the cap on 50 per cent occupation of seats will be taken off.

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Kerala reported 54,537 new COVID-19 cases and 13 deaths in the last 24 hours. As many as 30,225 patients recovered in the past 24 hours, said the state health bulletin. There are 3,33,447 active cases in the state and 1,629 patients are hospitalised. Kerala tested 1,15,898 samples in the last 24 hours. A total of 258 deaths were added to the list as per the new guidelines of the Central government, taking the toll to 52,786 in the state.

A Palestinian health official has said that the Gaza Strip is passing through a "difficult and catastrophic" situation due to the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19. "The infection curve is rising at an accelerating and unprecedented rate," Fathi Abu Warda, an adviser to the Palestinian minister of health, told reporters in Gaza. "95 patients are hospitalised with 63 in critical condition, and the occupancy rate of intensive care beds reached 56 per cent," Xinhua news agency quoted Abu Warda as saying. Abu Warda called on every citizen who suffers from Covid-19 or has any Covid-19 related symptoms should go immediately to the hospital, noting that 48 per cent of the admitted patients in the hospitals in the Gaza Strip "are cases infected with Omicron". "The current cold weather that hits the Palestinian territories and the lack of power in the Gaza Strip that reaches 12 hours blackout per day amid a shortage of warming means" have helped the spread of the virus, he said. "So far, 30 per cent only of the Gaza Strip populations have received the vaccinations," Abu Warda said, adding that the health ministry urges people to get jabbed. On Friday, Palestine reported five fatalities and 5,380 new Covid-19 cases in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours, according to the health ministry's daily coronavirus report.

Amid an ongoing resurgence across the world, the global coronavirus caseload has topped 369.4 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 5.64 million and vaccinations to over 9.92 billion, according to Johns Hopkins University. In its latest update on Saturday morning, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed that the current global caseload and the death toll stood at 369,440,775 and 5,648,611, respectively, while the total number of vaccine doses administered has increased to 9,926,334,578. The US continues to be the worst-hit country with the world's highest number of cases and deaths at 74,058,529 and 882,275, according to the CSSE. The second worst hit country in terms of cases is India (40,622,709 infections and 492,327 deaths), followed by Brazil (25,050,601 infections and 626,170 deaths). The other countries with over 5 million cases are France (18,596,157), the UK (16,447,349), Turkey (11,343,693), Russia (11,217,423), Italy (10,683,948), Spain (9,779,130), Germany (9,524,797), Argentina (8,271,636), Iran (6,293,695) and Colombia (5,816,462), the CSSE figures showed.

Malaysia reported 5,522 new Covid-19 infections as of midnight Friday, bringing the national total to 2,855,930, according to the health ministry. There are 373 new imported cases, with 5,149 being local transmissions, Xinhua news agency reported, citing the data released by the ministry. A further 12 deaths have been reported, bringing the death toll to 31,952. The ministry reported 3,285 new recoveries, bringing the total number of cured and discharged to 2,773,948. Among 50,030 active cases, 127 are being held in intensive care and 70 of those are in need of assisted breathing.

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Twenty-five people lost their lives to COVID-19 in Punjab in last one day, a daily health bulletin said on Friday. The state reported 3,096 fresh coronavirus cases, which took the overall infection tally to 7,35,139. The deaths were reported from several districts including Amritsar, Ferozepur, Gurdsapur and Pathankot. With Friday’s numbers, the pandemic death toll reached 17,159. The number of active cases in the state stood at 33,036, said the bulletin. Of the fresh cases, Mohali reported the highest number of cases at 693, followed by Ludhiana and Jalandhar, which reported 467 and 234 cases, respectively. A total of 1,156 patients are on oxygen support while 95 critical patients are on ventilator support, said the bulletin. On Friday, 6,880 people recovered from the infection, which took the number of total recoveries to 6,84,944, it said.

Omicron, the highly contagious coronavirus variant sweeping across the country, is driving the daily American death toll higher than during last fall's delta wave, with deaths likely to keep rising for days or even weeks. The seven-day rolling average for daily new COVID-19 deaths in the US has been climbing since mid-November, reaching 2,267 on Thursday and surpassing a September peak of 2,100 when delta was the dominant variant. Now omicron is estimated to account for nearly all the virus circulating in the nation. And even though it causes less severe disease for most people, the fact that it is more transmissible means more people are falling ill and dying. “Omicron will push us over a million deaths,” said Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine. “That will cause a lot of soul searching. There will be a lot of discussion about what we could have done differently, how many of the deaths were preventable.” Omicron symptoms are often milder, and some infected people show no symptoms, researchers agree. But like the flu, it can be deadly, especially for people who are older, have other health problems or who are unvaccinated.

South Korea's daily Covid-19 cases reached yet another record high Saturday, driven by a rapid spread of the highly transmissible omicron variant, with a new nationwide virus response system coming into force. The country reported 17,542 new Covid-19 infections, including 17,349 local cases, raising the total to 811,122, Yonhap news agency reported, citing figures released by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). The daily count broke the record for the fifth consecutive day, spiking from 8,570 on Tuesday. The death toll from Covid-19 came to 6,712, up 34 from Friday. The fatality rate stood at 0.83 percent. The number of critically ill Covid-19 patients was 288, down 28 from the previous day. The public health agency said the infection tally could surge to as many as 100,000 a day in the next several weeks. South Korea introduced a revised virus response system Saturday to tackle the omicron wave. Some 250 testing stations set up at public health centers and large hospitals will adopt both rapid antigen self-tests and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests. People can choose which one they want to take. People aged over 60 or in high-risk groups, such as those with underlying illnesses, will be prioritized for PCR tests. Beginning Thursday, local hospitals and clinics will also administer self-test kits.

Singapore reported 5,554 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 on Friday, bringing the total tally to 338,625. Of the new cases, 1,887 cases were detected through PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests and 3,667 through ART (antigen rapid test) tests, Xinhua news agency reported, citing the statistics released by the Ministry of Health. A total of 636 cases are currently warded in hospitals, with 10 cases in intensive care units. Three death was reported from Covid-19 on Friday, bringing the total death toll to 853, the ministry said. The ministry said in another press on Friday's release that as of January 25, 48 local cases and 150 imported cases in Singapore have been confirmed to have had the BA.2 Omicron sub-lineage. The health authorities in Denmark have disclosed their findings that BA.2 is more infectious than BA.1, but with no significant difference in clinical outcomes. "We will need further data and study to fully understand the implications for severity, immunity and transmissibility of BA.2," said the ministry.

Karnataka Health Minister Sudhakar K on Friday said that statistics show that the Delta variant of COVID-19 has become less dominant which is now replaced by the Omicron variant of the virus as against the second wave in the country when the former variant was more dominant over the others.Sharing the genome sequencing data till Thursday in the state, the Minister said that the Omicron variant is more dominant in the ongoing third wave of COVID-19 with 67.5 per cent of the samples testing positive for the variant.On the contrary, the Delta variant, which was more dominant during the second wave with a 90.7 per cent positivity rate of the sample, has now become less dominant with a 26 per cent positivity rate. "Which strain is dominating in which wave in Karnataka? As per the genome sequencing sample, the following are the dominant strains: Second wave: 90.7 per cent Delta variant, Third-wave: 67.5 per cent Omicron variant and 26 per cent Delta variant of coronavirus," Sudhakar tweeted.Meanwhile, Karnataka reported 31,198 new COVID-19 infections on Friday with a positivity rate of 20.91 per cent.