India in community transmission stage: report

Omicron, the highly-transmissible Covid-19 strain driving the ongoing third wave of the pandemic across India, is in "community transmission stage" in the country, said a report released yesterday by a consortium of labs of the Indian government. 

The government's Covid research lab, which tracks genome sequencing of various strains of the disease, also said BA.2 lineage, an infectious sub-variant of Omicron, has been detected in India."

"Omicron is now in community transmission in India and has become dominant in multiple metros, where new cases have been rising exponentially," said the January 10 bulletin of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics or Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genetics Consortium (INSACOG). The bulletin was made public yesterday.

"Further spread of Omicron in India is now expected to be through internal transmission," the INSACOG under the Indian Health Ministry said.

India yesterday reported 333,533 new Covid-19 infections over the past 24 hours with 525 dead. On Saturday, India had reported 337,704 new cases and 488 dead.

The government in the statement said the recovery rate for infected people currently stands at 93.18%.

India said it tested 1.87 million people in the last 24 hours and it planned to continue to expand its testing through the country.