Chief Secretary Arun Kumar Mehta chaired a meeting of the COVID Task Force to review the public health response to COVID-19 and asked the divisional and district administrations to ensure universal testing of all foreign travellers to Jammu and Kashmir in the light of the emergence of new COVID variant ‘Omicron’.
An official spokesman in a statement issued here said that the chief secretary underscored the need to adhere to the laid down guidelines and test all the incoming foreign travellers through international flights.
As per the guidelines, the negative travellers would be sent for home quarantine of 7 days and re-tested on the 8th day, whereas, the COVID-19 positive patients would be sent to institutional quarantine centres for 15 days and their samples would be sent for genome sequencing at ICMR-designated testing laboratories.
The chief secretary impressed upon the Department of Health to establish genome sequencing facilities at Government Medical Colleges in Srinagar and Jammu to fast-track the detection of ‘Omicron’ variant and other mutations.
