Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya will review the Covid-19 situation and tackle the increasing omicron cases in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Telangana Lakshadweep, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The review meeting will be done via video conferencing and is scheduled for 2.30 pm today.

The Indian SARS-COV-2 Genomics Consortia (INSACOG) had also said that Omicron is in the community transmission stage in India. It has become superior in several metro cities where new cases have increased rapidly, with BA.2 lineage, an infectious sub-variant of Omicron found in the country, INSACOG added.

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At a press conference, National Centre for Disease Control Director Dr S K Singh said sub-lineages of Omicron, i.e. BA.1 and BA.2, were found in some samples while BA.3 has not been found yet. “We were getting more samples of BA.1 mostly in the travellers. But now we are observing that BA.2 has become more dominant in the country,” he said.