#Title

Govt to issue circular
FROM PAGE 1
after a meeting with NTAC today.
“We will sit with the national technical advisory committee [NTAC] on Covid-19 tomorrow. We will discuss the overall situation and make a decision,” she said while talking to journalists at the secretariat.
She also said that they assumed coronavirus infection would surge in March but it started to increase in early January. “So, we need to make some adjustments to our plans.”
The minister said, “We do not want to close the educational institutions. Rather, we want students to go there after taking vaccines. But it will become a problem for those aged below 12 years.”
The ministers came up with the statements at a time when another case of Omicron variant of coronavirus was detected in the country, raising the total number of Omicron cases to 21.
The new Omicron infected patient was a 22-year-old male from Dhaka, according to the data published on the global database GISAID last night.
His sample was collected for genome sequencing on December 28 by the Child Health Research Foundation.
The positivity rate of Covid-19 has also continued to rise as the health directorate reported 5.79 percent positive cases against 19,275 tests in the last 24 hours till 8:00am yesterday.
The positivity rate was 5.67 percent the previous day.
For the previous three and a half month since September 21, the positivity rate was below five percent -- a parameter that suggests control over virus transmission.
Yesterday, the total number of new cases was 1,116, decreased from 1,146 on the previous day.
On Friday night, the NTAC recommended engaging law enforcement agencies, including operating mobile court drives, so that health guidelines are strictly followed to curb the spread of Covid-19.
At the 50th meeting, the committee came up with four recommendations including strict implementation of health guidelines, bringing all the students under the vaccination programme, ensuring screening at all entry points, and ensuring quarantine and isolation, and preparing adequate general beds and ICU facilities in all Covid-19 designated hospitals and ample oxygen supplies.

Omicron spread due to mix of factors: WHO
AFP, GENEVA
The World Health Organization said Friday that the spread of Omicron was down to a combination of factors including the make-up of the Covid-19 variant and increased social mixing.
Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead, said people therefore needed to think about reducing their exposure to the virus and take control over its transmission, following a week of record numbers of new cases.
Van Kerkhove said Omicron transmitted very efficiently between people due to a number of reasons.
Firstly, its mutations allow the virus to adhere to human cells more easily.
“Second, is that we have what is called immune escape. And this means that people can be reinfected either... if they had a previous infection or if they’ve been vaccinated,” she said, in comments circulated by the WHO.
“The other reason is that we are seeing replication of Omicron in the upper respiratory tract -- and that’s different from Delta and other variants, including the ancestral strain which replicated in the lower respiratory tract, in the lungs.”
But in addition to these factors, the spread of the virus was also being driven by the context of people mixing more, spending more time indoors in the northern hemisphere winter, and not adhering to measures such as physical distancing.
Just under 9.5 million new Covid-19 cases were reported to the WHO last week -- a record, up 71 percent on the week before.
“The general public out there, what you need to worry about is just reducing your exposure to the virus,” said Van Kerkhove.
“We want people to understand and feel empowered that they have some control over infection.”
She also added that avoiding developing ongoing Long Covid symptoms was “reason enough” to try to prevent getting infected with the disease in the first place.