Kerala: India may see around 10 lakh cases of Omicron in the next two months, claims a member of the Covid expert committee in Kerala, warning that the country has just a month to "reactivate" the system to control the number of infections.
"Global trends show that the number of Omicron cases is going to reach 1000 in 2-3 weeks & one million, maybe, in 2 months. We don't have more than a month before a major outbreak happens in India. We need to prevent this," said Dr TS Anish, Member, COVID Expert Committee, Kerala, according to ANI.
He also said that most of the Omicron cases are from people coming from other countries.
"We cannot prevent the infections from spreading in India. We have one month to reactivate our system so that the number of infections does not get out of hand," he added.
Like Dr Anish's, Dr Sambit Sahu, Director (Medical) Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS), Hyderabad has made a similar statement about the surge in Covid-19 cases by January 2022.
"We expect a surge in COVID numbers by Jan end because we're no different from the world. We'll face what the world is facing. Hopefully, we'll not have the number of critically ill patients this time that we had earlier," Dr Sahu said according to news agency ANI.
The statements come amid a rising number of Omicron cases in India. The country has logged over 400 cases of the new variant with 17 states and Union Territories. According to the updated data of the ministry of health, India has reported 415 cases of Omicron variant of Covid-19 of which 115 have recovered till Friday.
Kerala had detected its first Omicron case on December 12 in Ernakulam district when a person who had returned from the UK tested positive. The state, since then, has added 36 more cases of Omicron.
The highest 108 cases have been detected in Maharashtra followed by 79 cases in Delhi, 43 in Gujarat, 38 in Telangana, 37 in Kerala and 34 in Tamil Nadu.
The country also has reported 7,189 new Covid-19 cases, 7,286 recoveries, and 387 deaths in the last 24 hours, as per the Health Ministry data.The number of active cases and deaths stands at 77,032 and 4,79,520 respectively.
Meanwhile, 183 of the total Omicron cases have been analysed so far and 121 of them had foreign travel history, says a study carried out by the central government.
Interestingly, 91 per cent of the 183 analysed cases were fully vaccinated with three having booster shots, 70 per cent were asymptomatic, and 61 per cent were males, the study shows.
Citing the World Health Organisation's findings, the government said Omicron has a significant growth advantage over Delta and is spreading fast through communities with a doubling time of 1.5 to 3 days.
