Omicron alert: War rooms, night curfew as needed in Centre's to-do list for states

Asserting that the Omicron variant is at least thrice more transmissible than Delta, the Centre on Tuesday issued a flurry of directives to states and union territories.

The Central government has urged states to "activate" war rooms, analyse even small trends and surges and keep taking strict and prompt containment action at district and local levels.

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In a letter to the states and union territories, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan advised imposition of night curfew, strict regulation of large gatherings, curtailing numbers in marriages and funerals besides increasing testing and surveillance.

The letter highlights measures that need to be taken in view of initial signs of surge in cases of Covid-19 as well as increased detection of Omicron in different parts of the country.

"At the district level there should be constant review of emerging data regarding the population affected by COVID-19, geographical spread, hospital infrastructure and its utilization, manpower, notifying containment zones, enforcement of perimeter of containment zones etc. This evidence should be the basis for effective decision making at the district level itself. "Such a strategy ensures that infection is contained at the local level itself before it spreads to other parts of the state," Bhushan said in the letter.

"Kindly activate the war rooms/EOCs (emergency operation centres) and keep analyzing all trends and surges, no matter how small and keep taking proactive action at the district/local level. Regular reviews with field officers and proactive action in this regard will definitely control the spread of infection and flatten the curve," he said.

In case of all new clusters of Covid positive cases, prompt notification of "containment zones", "buffer zones" should be done, strict perimeter control of containment zone according to extant guidelines must be ensured.

As part of test and surveillance methods, the Centre has mentioned door-to-door case searches, contact tracing of all Covid-positive persons.

All cluster samples must be sent to INSACOG Labs for Genome Sequencing without delay, Bhushan underlined.