Omicron: 'Probably hundreds of cases in India'
An expert in diseases says containment attempts like border closures are 'a fool's errand' - and calls for other measures like vaccines and masks to be prioritised.
Two men in the southern Indian state of Karnataka have tested positive for the Omicron coronavirus variant.
One of them, a 66-year-old South African national, had travelled from there and has already left India, officials said.
The second - a 46-year-old doctor in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru - has no travel history.
These are the first cases of the new Omicron variant to be reported in India.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that Omicron poses a "high infection risk".
At a press briefing on Thursday, health officials said the two patients with the new strain had shown mild symptoms.
Dr Ramanan Laxminarayan, the director of the Centre for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy in New Delhi. He told us about the Omicron cases found in India so far.
"It is almost certain that the Omicron variant exists in far more people in India than has been detected so far. This is just the tip of probably hundreds of cases already and everyone already knows that... There has been frequent travel between Africa and India and also between Europe and India, and given that it's such a transmissible variant it is highly unlikely that it has not entered the country probably weeks ago at the same time that it entered Europe."
(Photo: A health worker collects a swab sample from a passenger in Mumbai. Credit: EPA)
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