Eight Indian cities are to come under the scanner of the apex disease surveillance agency for a scientific survey of the spread of coronavirus and the reasons thereof. This will include the increasing cases of Omicron, especially among those with neither any history of travel nor contact.

Unlike last year, when ministers (aka the political class) and bureaucrats were monarchs of all they surveyed inmatters of public health, this year the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has been brought into the loop. This is as it should be considering that the medical fraternity was accorded a relatively minor rating in 2020, when first reports of the virus were highlighted in “breaking news”. And this short shrift to the medical fraternity was not unique to any state.

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The NCDC has reportedly asked state authorities to send all Covid-positive samples from Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune for genome sequencing. This will determine whether Omicron is already circulating in these cities.

According to the health ministry’s prognosis, one of the major epidemiological issues at this stage is whether Omicron is already in the stage of community transmission in the large metropolitan cities. And the sequencing will help the government to monitor the feared community transmission of Omicron.

Misgivings that there are early signs of Omicron circulating unnoticed in the community are not wholly unfounded. The praxis of physicians will hopefully determine the finding. There has been an increase in the number of Omicron patients with no history of international travel or contacts with “known cases”.

As many as 222 Omicron cases had been documented in India till Wednesday. The potential source of infection is as yet unknown. Suffice it to register that there are 30 in Delhi, eight in Maharashtra, six in Telangana, five in Karnataka, four in Kerala and three each in Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir.

Citywise sequencing can help detect Omission transmission in the community. This will enable the health authorities to undertake preventive and containment measures before any large outbreak. This, in the reckoning of the sequencing laboratories, is a “good step”. The average counts of new cases each day are said to be low enough to “sequence all samples found positive”.

The sequencing effort that has been proposed will necessitate a streamlined supply of samples to labs. Apart from coordinated distribution of samples for sequencing, funds and technical staff might be needed to scale up the process. India’s overall epidemic load has declined since the country’s first case of Omicron was detected in Bangalore on 22 November, but there has been a rise in new infections in December in Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai and Pune.

Several clusters have been surveyed in various states, but these have not been linked to Omicron. Once the case-count exceeds the threshold number, risk of an Omicron-fuelled wave are frightfully real and it is this risk that is sought to be addressed.