NEW DELHI : The union health ministry on Monday said that covid-19 positive samples collected from sentinel sites reveals presence of all Omicron variants in the community.
The government’s Integrated Disease Surveillance Program (IDSP) sentinel sites referred 324 COVID19 positive samples for sequencing to 22 INSACOG labs.
The samples were collected from 29 December to 7 January from different sentinel location like hospitals. “Sentinel sequencing of these positive samples lifted from the community revealed presence of all the omicron variants like BA.2 and its sub-lineages including BA.2.75, XBB (37), BQ.1 & BQ.1.1 (5), etc," said the government release.
However, no mortality or rise in transmission were reported in the areas where these variants were detected. Besides this, the union health ministry has initiated random testing of international travelers arriving at various Airports since 24 December last year. “Since then, 13,57,243 international passengers arrived in India from 7786 flights at various airports out of which 29,113 randomly selected passengers were tested by RT-PCR.