Kathmandu, December 4. The World Health Organization on Friday, announced that South-East Asia is at high risk of “Omicron” variant and therefore, the region must strengthen COVID response.

Through an official statement, WHO Regional Director for South-East Asia, Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh said, “Strengthening surveillance to rapidly detect importation of any new variant and transmission of existing virus and its variants, implementing calibrated public health and social measures and scaling up vaccination coverage should continue to be our focus.”

Singh explained, “We can not and should not let the virus and its variants spread and mutate further and continue to challenge us. We need to do everything we can to curtail their spread. We know what to do. The pandemic has lasted just too long and is draining our precious human and other resources. We need to stop this.”

The announcement came shortly after the Omicron variant was detected in India.

Omicron in India

India’s health ministry on Thursday announced that two covid-19 patients in Karnataka were found to be infected with the new “Omicron” strain. This was the first two cases in the giant country.

Hours later, the Union health ministry announced that 5 of the direct contacts of Patients tested positive for the viral infection. A doctor who treated the patients also tested positive. ‘Their samples have been forwarded for genome testing,’ said health officials. 

Birgunj Checkpoint launches “high surveillance”

On Thursday evening, the officials of the Nepal-India border checkpoint in Birgunj enabled high surveillance for people entering Nepal.

Parsa’s Chief District Officer Umesh Kumar Dhakal told reporters that the administration is following a new action plan to prevent the virus from entering the country.