Amid the potential threat from latest Covid-19 variant B.1.1.529, the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) committee on Monday decided to conduct RT-PCR on all people arriving from high-risk countries, genome sequencing and mandatory isolation in the national Capital as per Centre’s guidelines.
Manish Sisodia said, “Experts from the Centre have provided the DDMA details that they have so far gathered about the new variant. The Centre said it is keeping a watch and States have to ensure the same. We should not drop our guard irrespective of how deadly the variant is, or how much effectiveness a vaccine has against it.”
He said the Delhi Government has made necessary arrangements keeping in mind the Covid-19 crisis the Capital faced during the second wave of the pandemic in April and May this year.
As per the officials, the Chief Secretary was told to ensure continued coordination with Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA).
“In the meeting current situation in context of positivity rate, testing, hospital infrastructure ,efforts towards vaccination, enforcement of Covid appropriate behavior was reviewed in detail and experts present in the meeting decided and advised to contain the virus spread it is pivotal to continue to strictly adhere to the test, track ,treat strategy with special focus on surveillance, isolation of positive cases, contact tracing and strict enforcement of Covid appropriate behaviour,” an official said.
The high-level committee chaired by Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal stressed on the measures to curb the spread of new variant. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Sisodia, Health Minister Satyender Jain, Transport Minister Kailsah Gahlot, Chief Secretary of Delhi and other senior officials of Health Department, Director, AIIMS, Dr Randeep Guleria and V K Paul attended the meeting.
According to the minutes of meeting the Health Department has been advised to be in a state of preparedness and ensure adequate availability of beds, medicines, oxygen etc to tackle any emergent situation that may arise. It was emphasised that the pace of vaccination should be enhanced for maximum coverage.
“It was stressed that necessary institutional mechanism be put in place for rigrous surveillance of international passengers, isolation of positive cases, monitoring of person in-home quarantine, timely genome testing of positive samples and effective dissemination of evidence based information to avoid any panic,” an official from L- G office said.
On Sunday, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to stop flights from countries that have been affected by the omicron variant.
“Our country has fought a tough fight against coronavirus for the last one-and-a-half years. We should do everything possible to prevent the new variant of concern from entering India,” Kejriwal said in his letter to the Prime Minister.
He added that a delay in stopping flights might prove to be harmful if a variant-infected person enters India.
The omicron variant of Covid-19 had been initially identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a variant of concern. However, the WHO said on Monday that the risk related to the variant is very high.
The variant was first detected in South Africa, the omicron variant has a higher number of mutations and has been spreading very quickly. So far, India has not reported any cases of the variant. However, the Centre confirmed that two clusters are under investigation in Maharashtra and Karnataka.