Chennai reports 33 cases of Omicron variant of coronavirus
As many as 33 cases of Omicron, including 26 from Chennai, were reported in Tamilnadu on Thursday, taking the total number of cases in the State to 34, Health Minister Ma Subramanian said.
Currently, Chennai has 27 cases of Omicron, Madurai has 4 cases, Tiruvannamalai has 2 cases and Salem 1.
Around 111 people, including international passengers and their contacts, tested positive for Covid in the State. The whole genomic sequencing report of about 60 people were sent to Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine (inStem), Bengaluru on Wednesday from where 33 cases were confirmed, said Ma Subramanian. Of the 34 cases, about 27 of them were reported in passengers from non-risk countries and 7 of them were reported from at-risk countries.
He said that majority of the patients are asymptomatic and do not present any form of severity of the disease. More than 4,000 contacts of international passengers, first Omicron case and their secondary contacts have been tested as part of contract tracing and the S-gene-drop report of several samples is awaited.