Another 18 people at IIT-Madras have tested positive for COVID-19, taking the total number of infections on the campus to 30 in two days, officials said on Friday amid a nationwide spike in coronavirus cases.

Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan, who visited the IIT-Madras campus on Thursday, said the 12 persons who tested positive on campus were “doing fine and do not require hospitalisation.” All of them have been vaccinated.

"We have collected 365 samples as of today (at IIT Madras) and a necessity may arise to test 1,500-2,000 people here in the locality if positive cases increase", he explained.

He said that based on the genome analysis of the cases, 90 per cent are Omicron cases of BA.2 variant.

The surge in aces has given rise to concern as educational institutions had resumed normal studies after a long gap.

In Tamil Nadu, the cases had gone down to as low as 18 but now it has slowly increased again.

Meanwhile, nationwide 2,451 new cases of Covid-19 were recorded on Friday, April 22. This has pushed the total number of active cases to 14,241 in the country.

For the third day in a row, India has recorded more than 2,000 new cases of Covid-19.

The daily positivity rate stood at 0.55% with the weekly positivity rate at 0.47%.

There is some cause for worry as people have become careless and tend to avoid masks and do not follow Covid-appropriate behaviour.

Many states have now been forced to make wearing masks mandatory again as the number of COVID infections has started rising.

Meanwhile, the total number of vaccinations in the country crossed 187.26 crore mark on Friday.

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