Omicron scare: No need for statewide night curfew now, says Odisha health official

The Odisha government on Monday said there is no need to impose restrictions such as night curfew and lockdown across the state as of now amid concerns over the detection of eight cases of the Omicron variant of coronavirus in the coastal state.

Night curfew is in force in all urban areas of the state from 10 pm to 5 am.

State’s Public Health Director Niranjan Mishra told journalists here, “Currently, the situation is not conducive for imposing the curbs. Lockdown or night curfew is clamped after considering factors such as the number of daily cases, test positivity rate, total active cases, and hospitalisation rate.” Odisha has already banned public celebrations to ring in the New Year.

Referring to the details of the Omicron cases detected in the state thus far, the top health official said, 18 international passengers had tested positive for COVID-19 through RT-PCR tests.

“Their samples were sent for genome sequencing, and eight of them were found to be infected with Omicron variant."

“The health condition of all the Omicron-infected patients is stable. Most of them were either asymptomatic or had mild symptoms,” Mishra said.

On Monday, Odisha logged 123 new coronavirus cases, taking the tally to 10,54,004, the health department said in a bulletin.

The COVID-19 death toll mounted to 8,453, with another patient succumbing to the infection in Khurda district.

Besides, 53 COVID-19 patients died due to comorbidities in the past, the bulletin said.

Seventeen children were among the 123 new infections logged on Monday.

The state, at present, has 1,572 active cases and 144 people recuperated from the disease on Sunday, taking the total number of recoveries to 10,43,926.

Odisha has conducted a total of 55,084 sample tests for COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, and the daily positivity rate is 0.22 per cent, it said.

On Sunday, Odisha had reported 112 new COVID-19 cases and one fatality.

More than 2.89 crore people have been inoculated with the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine, and 1.98 crore beneficiaries have been administered the second jab, it added. 

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