Amid the Omicron scare and surge in cases in various parts of the country, the Union Health Ministry on Saturday said that multi-disciplinary Central teams would be deployed in ten identified states. "A decision has been taken to deploy multi-disciplinary Central teams to 10 identified States some of which are either reporting an increasing number of Omicron and Covid-19 cases or slow vaccination pace," says Union Health Ministry in an official statement.

Multi-disciplinary Central teams are to be deployed in Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Mizoram, Karnataka, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Punjab. These teams will be stationed in the states for three to five days and will work along with the State Health Authorities. As per the Ministry, these teams will specifically look at areas of contact tracing, including surveillance, containment operations, and Covid-19 testing including sending of adequate samples from clusters to the INSACOG network for genome sequencing.