Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has said that apart from COVID -19 cases the infection rate of Omicron variant has started increasing in the province, citizens need to follow the SOPs, otherwise it would turn alarming. In a statement issued here from CM House on Thursday, Murad Ali Shah said that between December 28, 2021 to January 2, 2022, 133 tests were conducted, of them 95 were detected as Omicron variants taking the tally to 268 in the province. He added that a few cases have travel history, otherwise most of them were locally transmitted. It may be noted that earlier Sindh had 173 Omicron cases and with the emergence of 95 new cases the number has increased to 268. “It shows that the new variant was spreading fast and needed to be controlled through precautionary measures,” he said. Giving details of the daily situation report, the CM Sindh said that two more patients of Coronavirus died overnight lifting the death toll to 7,678 that constituted 1.6 percent death rate. Syed Murad Ali Shah said that 17,702 samples were tested which detected 759 cases that constituted 4.3 percent current detection rate. He added that so far 7,214,489 tests have been conducted against which 483,728 cases were diagnosed as positive, of them 96.8 percent or 468,467 patients have recovered, including 105 overnight. The CM Sindh said that currently 7,583 patients were under treatment, of them 7,386 were in home isolation, 48 at isolation centers and 149 at different hospitals. He added that the condition of 142 patients was stated to be critical, including 16 shifted to ventilators.