Chennai: The National Institute of Virology confirmed 11 more cases of Omicron in Tamilnadu, taking the number of confirmed cases in the state to 45. On Tuesday, the State had 21 patients still under treatment for the infection, while 24 others have been discharged.
The number of persons infected with the Omicron variant is expected to rise in the next few days as s-gene dropout has been noticed in at least 50 other samples of Covid-19 patients.
According to a bulletin issued by the Health Department on Tuesday, the State had 45 confirmed cases of the Omicron variant — 13 international travellers on arrival, 10 international travellers on the eighth day of testing and 19 contacts of international travellers, while three were not linked to international travellers.
Tamilnadu has mandated week-long domiciliary quarantine and exit tests for all international passengers.
The State government has said that the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 among close contacts and in closed unventilated rooms is ‘significantly and extremely high’, quoting preliminary data from contact tracing of those infected with the Omicron variant.