Omicron especially dangerous for unvaccinated, says WHO

Positivity rate for Covid-19 has increased by more than 1800% in just 11 days of January. While one district Ujjain (26.71%) has more than 10% weekly positivity rate, five others namely Jabalpur (9.95%), Bhopal (8.17%), Indore (7.20%), Gwalior (6.4%) and Shahdol (5.76%) have more than 5%.

Delhi recorded 23 deaths due to Covid-19 on Tuesday, the highest in nearly seven months. In the past three days alone, the city has recorded 57 deaths due to the viral infection.

In a major scare at the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IIT-H), 119 students and staff tested positive for Covid-19 between January 6 and January 11, authorities said.

A Covid-19 cluster has been identified at IIT-Madras, with 58 people, including 17 students, testing positive on campus between January 5 and 9.

As people experiencing mild symptoms have been increasingly opting for a self-test for Covid-19 with home kits, experts have raised concerns. In contrast to the first and second waves, the use of readily-available home test kits has increased in the third wave.

The latest report of Covid-positive samples analysed in genome-sequencing labs of Delhi proves what medical experts have been saying for some time — the massive surge in new cases is fuelled by the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus.

As India reported 1,94,720 COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, 15.8 per cent higher than Tuesday's 1.68 lakh cases, a survey shows that the prevalence of positive cases in close social networks has doubled within a week. One in two Indians surveyed by LocalCircles now have someone in their close social network testing positive in last 30 days.