Out of 183 Omicron cases in India, 87 fully vaccinated

New Delhi: Out of the total 183 Omicron cases in India analysed so far, 87 cases have been found fully vaccinated and and out of these, three were also given the booster dose, the Union Health Ministry announced on Friday.

Of the total, 61 per cent of the Omicron cases analysed were male and 39 per cent were female.

Addressing a press briefing on the current Covid pandemic situation in the country, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that India has so far reported 358 cases of Omicron and out of these, 114 have recovered.

He further added that an analysis of 183 Omicron cases was done which revealed that 121 cases had history of foreign travel, 44 had no foreign travel history, but the majority of them were in contacts of the foreign travellers. However, 18 patients have no travel information yet, he said.

About the vaccination status of these analysed Omicron cases, Bhushan said that 87 patients were fully vaccinated and out of these, three were inoculated with the booster dose. Out of these three with booster dose, two patients are from Delhi and one from Maharashtra.

Seven patients were unvaccinated and two were partially vaccinated and 16 were ineligible to take the jab. The vaccination status of 73 patients is unknown, he said.

“The world is witnessing the fourth surge and the overall positivity is 6.1 per cent. Therefore, we have to be on guard and we can’t afford to loosen our guards”, said Bhushan, adding that while Europe, North America and Africa are seeing an increase in Covid cases week-on-week, Asia is still witnessing a decline in Covid cases week-on-week.

About the government’s preparations, he said that, as on Friday, 18,10,083 isolation beds, 4,94,314 oxygen supported beds, 1,39,300 ICU beds, 24,057 paediatric ICU beds and 64,796 paediatric non-ICU beds available across the nation. He said that India has administered the first dose to 89 per cent of the adult population and 61 per cent of the eligible population has received the second dose of vaccines.

On the question of national policy on booster dose, Indian Council of Medical research Director General, Dr Balram Bhargava, said that the deliberations are underway and the scientific data is being reviewed to formulate a policy.

“The predominant strain is Delta including the recently identified clusters. Therefore, we need to continue with the same strategy of Covid appropriate behaviour and ramping up of vaccination,” he said.

“We are testing the efficacy of the vaccines against the Omicron variant,” he added.

(IANS)