46 fresh Omicron cases take national tally to 717

India's Omicron tally on Tuesday evening jumped to 717 after the country recorded 46 more cases, significantly lower than the 135 infections recorded the previous day, the Union health ministry said.

As per the latest reports, Delhi led the spurt in fresh cases with 23 patients testing positive, taking the total in the national capital to 165, just two less than Maharashtra, which has the highest number of cases in the country. Significantly, no fresh case was reported in Maharashtra on Tuesday.

Sources in the Delhi government said that with the rising cases of omicrons, it is likely that all international travellers arriving in the national capital may have to go for mandatory quarantine at hotels near the Delhi airport. This measure is being considered to prevent the community spread of the new version.

Amid surging Covid-19 cases and the detection of the Omicron variant of the virus in the national capital, the Delhi government on Tuesday announced stringent curbs to mitigate the spread.

As per the fresh Covid-19 guidelines under its Level -1 (Yellow Alert), cinema halls, spas, gyms, multiplexes, banquet halls, auditoriums and sports complexes will be closed with immediate effect. Night curfew will be imposed from 10 pm to 5 am. Delhi Metro, restaurants and bars will operate at 50 per cent capacity.

Schools will also be shut, while shops in malls will operate on the odd-even basis, the order stated.

Apart from Delhi, Tamil Nadu reported 11 cases, taking its tally to 45, while seven cases were reported from Telangana and five from Gujarat. With a total of 78 cases, Gujarat is the third most affected state in the country after Maharashtra and Delhi. Telangana ranks fourth with 62 cases.

In Tamil Nadu, out of the 11 fresh cases, seven are from Chennai. Of the total 45 patients in the state, 24 have been discharged.

Meanwhile, Paul Kattuman, developer of India's Covid tracker on Tuesday said that India may see a spurt in the Covid-19 growth rate within days and head into an intense but short-lived virus wave as the highly-infectious omicron variant moves through the crowded nation of almost 1.4 billion.

"New infections will begin to rise in a few days, possibly within this week," Kattuman, professor at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge said, adding that it was hard to predict how high the daily cases could go.