Omicron’s warnings: Despite pleas from authorities encouraging restraint and prudence in the wake of the fast-spreading Omicron variant of the coronavirus, Indians are thronging markets and flying to vacation locations in record numbers.
Hotels in the coastal state of Goa, which is extremely famous as a tourist destination for its beaches and offshore casinos, are nearly 90% full, with 90 aircraft landing in the western state every day, bringing air traffic numbers back to pre-pandemic levels.
“For a year, people haven’t celebrated anything. This year we have holiday-makers as well as people celebrating their milestone birthdays and weddings. In terms of occupancy, we are back to pre-COVID levels,” Nilesh Shah, who heads a top travel body in the state, told Reuters news agency.
More than a million tourists visited Goa in December alone, according to Shah, as COVID-related restrictions in most of India were removed and coronavirus cases fell to a year-and-a-half low.
Omicron’s warnings
However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi‘s government has cautioned states not to relax their guard since the number of Omicron variant cases has risen to 358, despite the fact that no deaths have been reported.
“There are festivals, there is the New Year and we are seeing that there could be trouble because of that,” Vinod Kumar Paul, a senior government official who advises Modi on the pandemic, told a news conference on Friday.
Odisha, in the east, set more restrictions on Friday, prohibiting all social gatherings till January 2 and limiting the number of people allowed into churches for Christmas. This comes after the Indian capital territory of New Delhi implemented similar restrictions earlier this week.
Due to the surge in Omicron infections, an Indian court requested Modi’s government to halt political rallies in states with upcoming elections on Thursday.
The state assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, which has a population of over 220 million people, are set for early 2022, but the exact dates have yet to be declared. Local elections are also scheduled in three additional states at the same time.
An examination of 183 Omicron variant illnesses found that 87 were among fully vaccinated people and three involved patients who had booster doses, according to India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
In contrast to North America and Europe, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan told reporters on Friday that COVID-19 infections are declining in Asian countries.
Despite having among the world’s top vaccine manufacturers, India has mostly relied on two vaccines: the Serum Institute’s AstraZeneca vaccine and Bharat Biotech’s locally created vaccine.
During the epidemic, India documented 34.8 million COVID-19 cases and over 480,000 fatalities.
In September 2020 and April-May this year, the country was ravaged by two huge outbreaks. At the peak of its second spike in May, it reported over 400,000 new cases in only 24 hours. The country has seen roughly 7,000 new cases per day on average over the last two weeks.
Modi’s government has rushed to vaccinate all 944 million people in the country, giving at least one treatment to 88 percent and two doses to 61 percent of them.
