Omicron is now in community transmission in India and has become dominant in multiple metros, where new cases have been rising exponentially. This was stated by the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) in its bulletin released today.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), community transmission “is evidenced by the inability to relate confirmed cases through chains of transmission for a large number of cases.’’

In other words, a community transmission case is generally accepted as referring to an infected patient without any known contact with another confirmed case of viral infection or recent travel history to or from a country badly affected by a pandemic.

It further added that the BA.2 lineage is a substantial fraction in India and Sgene dropout based screening is thus likely to give high false negatives. Tests suitable for PCR based screening applicable to all Omicron lineages have been approved for use. While most Omicron cases so far have been asymptomatic or mild, hospitalizations and ICU cases have been increasing in the current wave.

The threat level remains unchanged. The recently reported B.1.640.2 lineage is being monitored. There is no evidence of rapid spread and while it has features of immune escape, it is currently not a variant of concern. So far, no case detected

Globally INSACOG said that the Omicron wave continues to expand, with new highs being established for daily infections. Rate of hospitalization during this wave is much lower compared to the previous wave with Delta, attributable to both intrinsically reduced severity with lesser propensity to cause pneumonias, and higher population immunity. However, due to very high number of cases, absolute number of hospitalizations has crossed previous highs in many countries and is creating stress on healthcare systems. While deaths have been much lower during the new wave, compared to previous waves, there have been Omicron-associated deaths. In data so far, the majority of severe cases and deaths have been in unvaccinated subjects, with high protection associated with vaccination or previous infection.

India on Saturday reported an increase of 94,540 in active Covid-19 cases to take its count to 2,113,365. The country is sixth among the most affected countries by active cases. On Friday, it added 337,704 cases to take its total caseload to 38,903,731 from 38,566,027 — an increase of 0.88%. And, with 488 new fatalities, its Covid-19 death toll reached 488,884, or 1.26 per cent of total confirmed infections.