2 more Omicron cases detected

| | New Delhi
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2 more Omicron cases detected

Sunday, 05 December 2021 | PNS | New Delhi

2 more Omicron cases detected

One each flier from S Africa, Zimbabwe found positive in Maha, Gujarat

Two more new cases of Omicron infection, SARS-CoV-2 variant of Covid-19 were reported on Saturday in India, one each from Maharashtra and Gujarat. With this, the number of infections from Omicron has gone to four in two days. Two cases of the new variant of Covid-19 were reported from Karnataka on Friday. On Saturday, one case was reported from Jamnagar in Gujarat, another one from Mumbai.

A 72-year-old man from Zimbabwe, who reached Jamnagar last week, was found infected with the Omicron variant of the coronavirus disease becoming the first case in the State, the State health department confirmed.

Dr S Chatterjee, the nodal officer for Covid-19 at the State-run Guru Gobind Singh Hospital in Jamnagar told reporters, “The man’s samples were sent to the Biotechnological Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad which found him positive for the Omicron variant. He has been kept in isolation ever since his admission to the hospital. We had traced all his contacts, screened them and they tested negative.”

He added, “We will test all his contacts once again after the reports confirmed that he carried the Omicron variant of the virus.”

Gujarat’s additional chief secretary (health) Manoj Aggarwal said, “A micro containment zone has been made where he is living. In the area, we will do the tracing, testing of people.”

He landed in Jamnagar on November 28. Soon after, he was running a fever and his doctor asked him to go for an RT-PCR test and he was found Covid-19 infected.

The officials are also tracing 87 people who could have come in contact with him in the Jamnagar district.

The man was visiting his in-laws at his native Morakda village near Jamnagar city and has been living in Zimbabwe, which has been classified as an “at-risk” country, for many years. In the second instance, a 33-year-old man, who arrived in Mumbai from South Africa via New Delhi, tested positive for the latest variant on Saturday. The passenger, who is exhibiting mild symptoms, including fever, is currently under treatment at a Covid centre in Kalyan-Dombivali.

The infected person arrived from Capetown on November 24 and complained of mild fever, but no other symptoms were noticed.

Meanwhile, 30 other passengers coming from Dubai to Ahmedabad and a woman who reached Vadodara from London have tested positive for Covid-19.

Their genome sequencing is being done to ascertain if they have been infected with the Omicron mutant.

India is on a list of at least 30 countries where the variant has been detected though, so far, the evidence doesn’t suggest it to be more lethal than the Delta variant. However, the sharp rise in cases in South Africa and the significant number of mutations it bore that potentially gave it a growth advantage are factors that prompted the World Health Organisation (WHO) to label it a Variant of Concern within days of it being reported by the South African medical authorities.

India currently reports around 9,000 coronavirus cases a day, with the bulk of them being reported out of Kerala. The India Sars-Cov-2 genome consortium, which is in charge of testing a portion of positive samples to ascertain their genomes, in an update on Monday underlined that most of the cases being detected in India were of the Delta variant and its associated sub-lineages.

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