Screen all foreign arrivals for Omicron: Telangana government

HYDERABAD: After detecting three Omicron cases from just 200 random samples of international passengers at the Hyderabad airport, the Telangana government has shot off a letter asking the Centre to allow testing for all international passengers.
The fact that the three cases were detected in Telangana, of whom one further travelled in a domestic flight, and had travelled from non-risk west Asian destinations — Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Doha, shows that many cases may have been going under the radar, health officials said.
“We have tested nearly 6000 samples from the 11 high-risk countries landing at the Hyderabad airport of which we found only three RT-PCR positive but not a single person was detected as Omicron positive. On the other hand, we found three during the random sampling of just 200 passengers,” said Dr G Srinivasa Rao, director (public health) Telangana.
“Therefore, we cannot label countries as high risk countries and only screen passengers coming in from these countries. We have requested the centre to enforce same norms for all countries,” he added. The doubling rate of the Omicron variant is less than two days in India and the high transmissibility is a cause of concern, he said.
Health officials also confirmed that all three passengers detected Omicron positive in Telangana were asymptomatic, which only means that the threat of the spread is high.