While New Year is around the corner, Covid cases in the country are rising rapidly, especially in Maharashtra. In the last 24 hours, as of 12 noon today, 13,154 new cases were detected, taking the active cases tally to over 82,000 in the country.
Total Omicron cases jumped to 961, with 263 cases in Delhi and 252 cases in Maharashtra. While Gujarat has 97 new cases of Omicron, Rajasthan (69), Kerala (65), Telangana (62) and Tamil Nadu (45) were the other states reporting the variant cases, as per the Health Ministry data.
In the wake of fast-spreading Coronavirus variant, several states have imposed night curfews and travel restrictions to prevent further spread of the disease.
Globally, the US, India and Brazil have seen the highest number of confirmed cases, followed by the UK, Russia and Turkey. In the last one week, almost 9 lakh Covid-19 cases on an average are reported every day. The US is witnessing over 2.65 lakh cases per day and the UK 1.83 lakh cases per day, both record numbers.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that Delta and Omicron are twin threats that are driving up cases to record numbers, which is again is leading to spikes in hospitalisations and deaths.
"I am highly concerned that Omicron being more transmissible, circulating at the same time as Delta - is leading to a tsunami of cases. This is and will continue to put immense pressure on exhausted health workers and health systems on the brink of collapse and again disrupt lives and livelihoods," said Tedros Adhanom, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO).