NEW DELHI: Amid a surge in Covid-19 cases in China and other countries, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal will hold an emergency review meeting on Thursday to take stock of the situation, the Delhi government said on Wednesday. The meet will be attended by deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and other ministers.Also see: Coronavirus Live UpdatesThe move comes after Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya warned against taking the virus lightly, saying “Covid is not yet over”.According to health department officials, samples of those testing positive with a CT value of less than 25 will be sent for genome sequencing.“We are reviewing the situation and taking all precautionary measures. Strategies will be the same as previously implemented and the target will be to control any spike in cases,” said an official.Delhi has been seeing single-digit daily infections of Covid and has 31 active cases currently. The number of daily samples taken is about 3,000 and the positivity rate is below 1%.Dr Suresh Kumar, medical director, Lok Nayak Hospital, said the hospital has not received any Covid patient in the past 20 days.“We will continue to carry out genome sequencing in our lab too. We have sent 10 samples in the past three weeks. Their results are awaited. If more patients come, we will send their samples too (for genome sequencing),” he said.Dr Jugal Kishore, community medicine head, Safdarjung Hospital, said China immunised its population with Sinovac, a vaccine that can protect for only two years.“The Omicron variant is highly transmissible and evades immunity. The latest surge could be due to a totally new variant, but it appears to be Omicron only. India and other countries have tried to protect their population by Covid-appropriate behaviour and monitoring the situation by genome sequencing,” he added.Dr Lalit Kant, former deputy ICMR DG and head of the epidemiology department, said Omicron’s BF.7 variant, which is causing a spurt in cases not just China but in European countries as well, is a sub-lineage of the BA.5 variant and is highly transmissible.“BF.7 variant has been going around in India for some time now and is able to escape immunity and vaccination protection. If cases rise, the variant has a scope to mutate further and a new strong variant could emerge,” he said.Dr V K Paul, member, Niti Aayog, pointed out during the health ministry’s review meeting that only 27-28% of India’s eligible population has taken the precaution or booster dose so far. For Delhi, the figures are abysmally low too. Out of the 1.5 crore people who have been fully vaccinated, only 33.5 lakh have got their booster shots till now.“People don’t come for vaccination or booster doses as they don’t fear Covid now. The number of vaccination centres has also reduced and the staff are now engaged in other health-related activities and immunisation programmes,” said a health department official from west district.
Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/delhi-cm-arvind-kejriwal-calls-meeting-as-fresh-covid-19-worries-emerge/articleshow/96407519.cms
