New Delhi: Omicron, the highly infectious variant of Covid-19, continues to spread in India with as many as 219 cases in the country as of Wednesday. The latest cases have been reported in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan today.
So far, the new variant has marked its presence in 15 states and UTs of India. Data released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Wednesday showed that 90 of the Omicron positive cases have either recovered or migrated.
One Omicron case was reported in Vanasthalipuram area of Hyderabad on Wednesday. A 23-year-old man, who came from Sudan recently, tested positive for the new variant. The person, according to officials, has not been vaccinated yet.
Following the steady surge in such cases, Prime Minister Modi will chair a key review meeting on Covid with the top healthcare authorities on Thursday.
Delhi has the highest 57 active Omicron cases, followed by 54 in Maharashtra. Other states with a comparatively high number of active Omicron cases include Telangana (25), Karnataka (19), Rajasthan (22), Kerala (15) and Gujarat (14).
The ministry data updated at 8 am on Wednesday also stated that India logged 6,317 new coronavirus infections taking the total tally of COVID-19 cases to 3,47,58,481, while the active cases declined to 78,190, the lowest in 575 days.
The death toll climbed to 4,78,325 with 318 fresh fatalities, whereas on the brighter side, the daily rise in new coronavirus infections has been recorded below 15,000 for the last 55 days now.
The active cases comprise 0.22 per cent of the total infections, the lowest since March 2020, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate has further improved to 98.40 per cent, the highest since March 2020, the ministry stated.
A decline of 907 cases has been recorded in the active COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours. India had crossed the grim milestone of two crore covid-19 cases on May 4 and three crore on June 23.
India's Covid inoculation coverage has reached 138.96 crore as of Wednesday morning.
More than 17.73 crore balance and unutilised Covid vaccine doses are still available with the states and union territories to be administered, according to the health ministry as of Wednesday morning.
