Third Wave On, 75% Cases In Metros Are Omicron: Covid Task Force Boss

Omicron threat: "India is clearly in the third wave of COVID-19," Dr NK Arora told NDTV

A large chunk of Omicron cases in India as the country faces a third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic have been reported from big cities, the head of the country's vaccine task force told NDTV today, adding the third wave of the pandemic is very much here.

Large cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata have a combined 75 per cent share of infections of the highly transmissible coronavirus variant Omicron that was first detected in South Africa in November, said Dr NK Arora, who has been very closely involved with the rollout of vaccines from the very onset.

"Look at whatever the variants have been genome sequenced... We got our first virus right in the first week of December. So, last week, nationally overall, 12 per cent of the variants identified were Omicron and the week gone by in the previous week, it has increased to 28 per cent. So, it is rapidly increasing as a proportion of all the Covid infections in the country. Now, having said that, I must also say something more important and that is that around the major metro cities, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and particularly Delhi, it is over 75 per cent of all the isolates now," said Dr Arora, who is Chairman of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, or NTAGI.

India has so far reported 1,700 Omicron cases, with Maharashtra reporting the most number of infections at 510. The country also saw a 22 per cent jump in new COVID-19 cases, government data this morning showed.