ropar taking notice of three covid19 cases reported in school at nangal and a new variant of corona virus namely omicron the deputy commissioner on monday issued the instructions to ropar civil surgeon to increase covid19 testing in schools and high risk areasropar dc sonali giri said that to accelerate contact tracing of covid patients instructions have been issued to the health department and all students are kept under home isolation she said that she has instructed the health department to check the daily health status of students and submit the report to her daily she also instructed the schools management to strictly follow covid appropriate behaviors like social distancing wearing of masks and hand sanitization in class roomsreferring to a new variant of coronavirus she said that as per reports of experts omicron is much more infectious than the delta variant new covid variant omicron which has been declared as a variant of concern by the world health organisation who has triggered global worries she said the variant was first detected in south africa earlier this month since then the new strain has already been detected in several european countriesdivulging about the vaccination programme sonali giri said so far 406003 persons have been vaccinated with first dose covid vaccine and 208358 with the second dose as on november 28 in rupnagar districtshe also appealed to people who have got their second dose due to come to the government vaccination centre and get fully vaccinated at earliest