WEB DESK
The Union Health Ministry on Thursday confirmed that two cases of Omicron Covid variant have been found in Karnataka.
While one case is of a male aged 46, the other is of a male aged 66. The potentially more contagious Omicron variant was first reported to the WHO from South Africa on November 24, and has been designated as a “Variant of Concern”.
The health ministry has been advising states and Union territories to keep a strict vigil and undertake surveillance of international passengers coming to the country through various airports.
Testing of samples of international travellers coming from ‘at risk’ countries on the first day and of specified category of passengers on the eighth day needs to be scrupulously done, it had stressed. International passengers from at-risk countries are being advised to wait at airports till the report of the RT-PCR test is available.
Surge in cases being noted across the world on an overall basis, Europe reported 70% of the cases in the world in last one week. In the week ending 28 Nov, around 2.75 Lakh new cases & over 31,000 deaths reported in European region, said Lav Agarwal, Jt Secy, Health Ministry