has been confirmed in various districts of Metropolitan Lima, thus increasing the number of infections to 47 in Peru.
The high-ranking official specified that there are 15 districts in Lima where 47 citizens infected with Omicron have been detected, indicating that 10 of them are contacts of the first 12 infected people, while the others are new cases.
It suggests that this variant might be having a community presence level in the country.
"These are confirmed Omicron cases in Lima. At this moment, based on the tracing we are conducting, we have not detected the presence of Omicron cases in regions, although it is quite probable that they might exist," he told TVPeru.
The high-ranking official said that Omicron cases are not severe ones. Besides, a considerable percentage of those citizens are vaccinated against COVID-19.
"We have indicated that Omicron can affect vaccinated people if they have not received the
booster dose; there are people of different ages, which range from 9 to 77 years old," he emphasized.
Within the characteristics detected, infected patients show the following symptoms: headache, fever, diarrhea, and sore throat, adding that what stands out most is that their incubation period is much shorter than in patients infected with other variants.
Furthermore, the physician said the main thing is to comply with the measures enacted by the Government, such as maintaining social distancing, wearing face masks, and avoiding crowds.
He also explained that there are no restrictions on the presence of people at beaches nationwide.
Nonetheless, there are restrictions on the sale and consumption of food or alcohol in those areas because people tend to remove their face masks to eat or drink them, thus leading to infection risks.
(END) LIT/MVB