Kerala Health Minister Veena George spoke to NDTV today.
Kerala today reported its biggest single-day surge in Omicron cases with 44 infections. The southern state has logged 107 cases so far, and a majority of the cases are from low-risk countries.
"Now there is no difference between foreign returnees from high-risk or low-risk countries. Even though the central guidelines advise self-monitoring for people from low-risk countries but that does not mean they can mingle outdoors, go to malls for shopping, or attend gatherings. They can, at the most, mingle with their own family, so the contacts, in case of turning positive, remain restricted," Veena George, Kerala Health Minister, told NDTV.
Two people in the state tested positive for Omicron that did not have any travel history or were not even any primary contacts of any foreign returnees.
"We are keeping a close watch. We are identifying COVID-19 clusters and sending their samples for genome sequencing. No such case has confirmed positive for Omicron, which is a relief in a sense."
Kerala has been seeing a decline in daily COVID-19 cases as well as the test positivity rate, at a time when several states have been reporting a surge in Covid cases.
"The decline in our cases is as expected. Our focus was on delaying the peak. We had a slow rise and a slow decline in cases. In September our own serosurveillance conducted showed 82.6 per cent of people had antibodies... this could be because of being infected with Omicron as well as the high rate of vaccination in the state."