New Delhi: Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Wednesday asked all the States to submit the samples of all Covid positive cases of foreign travellers as well as their contacts . The announcement was made on the wake of nearly two dozen Omicron cases reported in the country.
‘The samples of positive cases from international travellers and their contacts as well as from emerging hotspots are promptly submitted to INSACOG labs for genome sequencing as per the protocol’, Bhushan said in a statement. ‘All Omicron positive cases have to be treated in designated Covid facilities with separate isolation areas earmarked for Omicron positive patients. All international travellers who have arrived in the community need to be monitored by the district surveillance team and their testing on the 8th day needs to be ensured if they have come from at-risk countries. Further, with the onset of winter and increased pollution in some States, the prevalence of ILI/SARI and respiratory distress symptoms should also be closely monitored’, the statement added.
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Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomic Consortia (INSACOG) is a laboratory that monitors the genomic variations in SARS-CoV-2 using a sentinel sequencing effort.
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