Pakistan has a total of 75 Omicron cases: NIH

Pakistan has a total of 75 Omicron cases as of December 27, the National Institute of Health (NIH) said in a statement on Tuesday.

"As of December 27, a total of 75 Omicron cases have been confirmed — 33 in Karachi, 17 in Islamabad and 13 in Lahore," said the statement.

It added that of these, 12 were associated with international travel.

The NIH said that the relevant authorities have isolated the patients and initiated contact tracing in order to control the spread of the variant.

According to the statement, the first case of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 was reported on December 13 in Karachi.

The NIH stressed on the need for people to get vaccinated, saying that vaccination and SOPs "continue to be our best defence against COVID-19 despite the mutations being reported".

It added that all the COVID-19 vaccines approved by the government "remain highly effective at preventing severe disease and hospitalisation".

"The government urges everyone to get both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine as well as the booster dose as per the eligibility criteria and process," said NIH.

Omicron is spreading faster than any variant before it, with cases in some countries doubling every two to three days.

It has already overtaken Delta as the dominant strain in Denmark and the UK, where the number of new cases daily has topped 100,000. It is likely to become dominant in other countries soon.

Infections have hit new highs in multiple US states and Europe, wreaking havoc on global air travel. Governments worldwide are scrambling to boost vaccinations, stressing that the overwhelming majority of hospitalisations and deaths are occurring among the unvaccinated.

Some 11,500 flights have been scrapped worldwide since Friday and tens of thousands more delayed, during one of the year's busiest travel periods — with multiple airlines saying spikes in cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant have caused staffing shortages.

Earlier in the day, the NCOC issued the latest coronavirus statistics, suggesting that the positivity rate in Pakistan remained 0.69% during the last 24 hours.

As many as 291 new COVID-19 infections were confirmed after 41,869 diagnostic tests were conducted overnight, while three patients succumbed to the virus during the same period.