Alarm bells as Panchkula records a Covid death

The last death due to the virus in Panchkula was reported on November 4.

Even though health authorities insist the patient’s demise was due to their severe comorbities, the death has come as a shock to several amid fears of the new Covid-19 variant being just as fatal.
The health department has been preparing and ramping up infrastructure, adding several Covid-19 beds, oxygen storage as well as oxygen plants.

The department has also been ramping up sampling and vaccination drives. Furthermore, the district has been running vaccination encouragement drives, calling people who are due for their second vaccine and targeting people who have not gotten vaccinated, which includes labourers, etc.

Italian found positive for Omicron stays in quarantine, has developed no symptoms.

A 20-year-old fully vaccinated resident of Italy – who arrived in India on November 22 and tested positive for the Omicron variant of Covid on Saturday, thereby, becoming Chandigarh’s first recorded case of the highly transmissible strain – continues to be in institutional quarantine at the Civil Hospital, Mani Majra.

Omicron is the new Covid variant that is more transmissible than the Delta strain and reduces vaccine efficacy but causes less severe symptoms.

The Italian man on Sunday, as per reports, had been retested and returned a negative Covid report.
According to Dr Suman Singh, director of Health Services, UT, the man has so far shown no symptoms of the virus.

Dr Singh added that no alternative arrangements are available for the man at the moment, as five of his relatives so far had tested positive for Covid, and their reports have been sent for whole genome
sequencing to NDC Delhi. One of his contact has tested negative and the report of one family member is awaited.

Meanwhile, Chandigarh UT reported 12 new positive Covid-19 cases with 71 active cases while Mohali has reported two new cases.