In the wake of sharp surging of Covid cases with the new 'Omicron BF.7 variant' in several countries including China, Korea, and Japan, the Union government has brought back the testing guidelines and protocols at the airports. The government has made random testing of passengers mandatory at all the international airports. 

Along with the state governments, Tamil Nadu government has also reinstated the testing measures and Covid guidelines amid the menace. Responding to whether the state has reported the Omicron BF.7 variant cases, Tamil Nadu Health Minister Ma Subramanian said that the stae has reported no cases of BF.7 variant and said that the genome sequencing report of the six international passengers who had landed at various international airports in the state has reported no BF.7 variant. 

Ma Subramanian said that the two China-returned passengers, who confirmed to have contracted Covid, were affected by BA5.2 variant. One passenger each from Muscat, Kuwait, and Bangkok was affected with BA.2 variant of Omicron while another passenger who landed from Muscat had tested positive for Covid with XBB.1 strain of Omicron. 

By citing that the state has analysed 93 samples so far and of this, 98 per cent had tested either BA.2 or BA.5 while the remaining 2% tested positive for the Delta variant, Ma Subramanian said that all the patients are recovering well after they isolated themselves at their residences. 

Tamil Nadu had reported twelve new cases of Covid on Monday - January 2 which took the total tally to 35,94,456 cases so far. Nine people have recovered from the pandemic on Monday and the state has 89 active cases of Covid as of Monday.