Delhi has reported one fresh case of Covid-19 due to Omicron, taking the tally of the heavily mutated virus variant to 465, according to the health ministry data. Maharashtra is still in the lead with 797 Omicron cases. Although the capital has reported fewer confirmed Omicron cases, 10,665 Covid-19 cases reported on Wednesday. Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain said that not all samples are being sequenced now – like the previous four months when fewer cases were being reported – but only 300 to 400 of the total positive samples. He said there was no relevance of sequencing more samples any longer because the new variant has already spread in the community. With the health minister stating that 81 per cent of the samples sequenced over the weekend are of the new variant, it seems that the variant has replaced Delta as the predominant strain of coronavirus. With the rising Covid-19 cases and the test positivity rate that shot up to 11.8 per cent on Wednesday, Delhi has also started recording an increase in hospital admissions. The capital recorded eight deaths on Wednesday, which is the highest since June-end when the second wave of the pandemic in the country was on the wane. It is worth noting that only four deaths were reported in Delhi for the entire month of October. The number of deaths due to the infection started to rise again during the last two weeks of December, with nine deaths reported in the month, of which seven were during the second half. There are 23,307 active Covid cases in Delhi, according to the health bulletin. Of these patients, only 782 are in hospitals while test results of at least 69 are awaited. There are 22 persons on ventilator support and 140 on oxygen support, according to the data. Doctors state that almost all patients have mild symptoms and the oxygen dependency is much less than that during the second wave caused by Delta.
