Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday urged people to wear masks in crowded places and called on states and officials to strengthen Covid-19 surveillance and hospital preparedness.
A media release from the PMO said Modi, who chaired a meeting on Covid-19 with officials, said precaution doses of the vaccine may be encouraged especially for elderly and vulnerable groups.
The Centre announced that 2 per cent incoming international travellers would be randomly tested, starting Saturday. Samples found positive will be genome-sequenced.
The meeting was held two days after the health minister asked Rahul Gandhi to follow Covid rules or suspend the Bharat Jodo Yatra. No Covid rules were issued.
India has witnessed a steady decline in Covid-19 cases over the past several months and the average daily new cases fell to 153 over the past week — from over 330,000 daily cases at the peak of the country’s third wave driven by the omicron variant in January this year.
The health ministry said the move to randomly test incoming travellers is being taken to “minimise the risk of ingress” of any new coronavirus variants from other countries at a time daily cases are rising in China, Brazil, France, Japan, South Korea and the US.
Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya told Parliament that the states had been advised to genome-sequence all Covid-19-positive cases for the timely detection of new variants, if any, circulating in the country.
Medical experts say the latest genome-sequencing data shows that the sublineages currently circulating in the country have all descended from Omicron and have not caused any increases in levels of severe disease, hospitalisation, or oxygen demand over the past several months.
Fake news
The health ministry on Thursday described as “fake” and “misleading” a message widely circulated on social media and WhatsApp groups over the past day that claimed a new omicron variant called XBB was “different, deadly, and not easy to detect”.
The false message claimed the XBB was five times more virulent than the delta variant.
In reality, a scientific website tracking coronavirus variants worldwide has documented the emergence of the XBB variant in India in August this year and its decline by November.
“Neither XBB nor any other sublineage we’ve seen this year has caused any increase in hospitalisation or severe disease,” said Rajesh Karyakarte, the head of microbiology at the BJ Medical College, Pune, and Maharashtra state coordinator for Covid-19 genome sequencing.
Masks for MPs
After the government sounded the alarm on Covid, the presiding officers of the two Houses of Parliament on Thursday urged MPs to mask up. Since most MPs had given up the mask this session, surgical masks were made available to them as they entered Parliament. The day’s proceedings began in both Houses with the presiding officers reading out statements urging all members to be cautious and set an example for the people by observing the Covid protocol.
