Tamil Nadu: 104 international passengers test Covid positive, 82 carry ‘S gene drop’
- inStem has received the results of 13 people, of which one was confirmed to have the 'Omicron' variant of the coronavirus, the 'delta' variant in eight and four 'non-sequence'
Tamil Nadu Minister for Medical and Family Welfare Ma Subramanian on Wednesday said that at least 104 international passengers have tested positive for the Coronavirus infections.
He further informed that, of them, eighty-two were detected with the 'S gene drop' variant of coronavirus.
The samples of the 82 passengers have been sent to the Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine (inStem), Bengaluru, for genome sequencing , the minister said.
"All the 82 passengers are fine", he told reporters.
On test samples already sent to inStem, he said the department has received the results of 13 people who were tested, of which one was confirmed to have the 'Omicron' variant of the coronavirus, the 'delta' variant in eight and four 'non-sequence'.
On 15 December, Tamil Nadu declared its first Omicron variant of coronavirus, which was a 47 year-old passenger who arrived from Nigeria.
The state government has requested the Centre to allow the health department to conduct Covid-19 tests of all international passengers arriving to Tamil Nadu, as against the current practice of testing those arriving from 'at risk' countries, the minister said.
On the vaccination front, he said the 16th state-wide mega vaccination camp would be held on December 26 (Sunday), targeting 93 lakh people who are eligible to receive the second dose of vaccination.
Earlier in the day, Subramanian declared open 'digital display boards' at the Government Kilpauk Medical College premises, following the announcement made in the state assembly.
In the first phase, 25 government medical college hospitals would be equipped with such digital display boards, totally costing ₹1.25 crore, which would inform patients about the services offered in the respective hospitals, he said.
604 fresh Covid-19 cases were detected in the state in the past twenty-four hours. This takes Tamil Nadu's tally to 27,41,617. Eight more fatalities were also reported which pushed the death toll to 36,699.