COVID-19 weekly briefing: CTA reports 12 new cases

DHARAMSALA, 31 Dec:  The COVID- 19 Task Force of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) urged Tibetans to submit the list of children below 18 through their respective settlement office as India will start administering Covid-19 vaccines to children in the age group of 15-18 years from January 3 next year.

“We request Tibetans to submit the list of vaccine-eligible children through their respective settlement office,” Deputy Secretary of Health Department Tenzin Kunsang said during the committee’s weekly briefing.

She stated that the vaccination program, Omicron, the new covid variant and the precautionary measures to tackle Omicron were the three key issues discussed at the committee’s meeting.

She further urged eligible and unvaccinated Tibetans above 18 to get vaccinated.

Dr Tsering Tsamchoe from the committee said that 12 new positive cases were reported among exiled Tibetans in India and Nepal over the past seven days.

The cases, she said were reported after testing 340 Tibetans from 14 Tibetan settlements in India.

Dr Tsamchoe said at the briefing that a total of 138 exiled Tibetans from 6 Tibetan settlements in India and 1 settlement from Nepal are under quarantine. 

While 83 of them are under home quarantine, 54 are under institutional quarantine.

The tally now stands at 6,988 COVID-19 positive cases to date, 6,815 recoveries, 162 deaths and 11 active cases.

The committee announced that  46,782 Tibetans in India are fully vaccinated while 3,496 Tibetans have received the first dose. the toll in Nepal stands at 6,989 Tibetans completely vaccinated while only 1 Tibetan has been inoculated with the first dose.

Since its outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019, the pandemic has infected 286,515,874 people and killed 5,429,596 people globally according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

India now stands as the 21st worst-hit country by the pandemic in the world with 34,838,804 cases to date and 481,080 deaths.