As the fast-spreading omicron form replaces delta in cities, India’s daily COVID-19 cases jumped to 117,100. Which is a five-fold increase in a week and on track to overtake its previous infection peak. Officials from the government are predicting that daily infections would surpass the previous high.
- WHO shows that nearly 70 percent of Indians had been exposed to the virus by the middle of last year. Already on Thursday, the city registered 20,181 new illnesses, a 50 percent increase above the previous high set last year. The total number of infections is now 35.23 million.
- M.D. Gupte, a former director of the state-run National Institute of Epidemiology and immunization adviser told in his statement that “We will clearly surpass our record shortly and reach a new peak by early February.”
- Around 80 percent of the hospital beds are still empty. Right now, there is no plan to impose a lockdown. If required, they might increase restrictions. “Oxygen demand is not rising in proportion to the rising cases,” M.D. Gupte is strictly mentioned in his statement.
- Health officials in India say the number of new cases of the virus is declining as people are recovering quickly at home. In Mumbai, about a quarter of all tests are positive but fewer than a fifth of those who have contracted the virus have needed hospitalization.
- Authorities have imposed a night curfew on weekdays and ordered most shops to open only on alternate days. Delhi goes into a 55-hour lockdown from Friday night to Monday morning. Already the state has closed schools and institutions, as well as limiting the number of people who can attend movies, weddings, and other events.
- Besides its Mexico is set to surpass 300,000 deaths from COVID-19 this week. Which made this countries record as the fifth-greatest death toll in the world. During the last week, the number of infections more than doubled to 20,000. It happened because numerous tourists from the United States and Canada visited Mexico. And for that Mexico’s 11 states took the decision that they not to start in-person school lessons this week.
Meanwhile, The Recording Academy postponed the music awards. Sundance organizers said the festival would go virtual with infection numbers reaching new highs. The heavily mutated Omicron variant accounted for around 95 percent of US cases in the week ending January 1. France set a record for new Covid cases over a 24-hour period, with 332,000 additional infections recorded.
