Ahmedabad/Mumbai: Two cases of Omicron variant of COVID-19 were reported from Gujarat's Jamnagar and Maharashtra's Kalyan Dombivali on Saturday. With this, India has so far reported four cases of the Omicron variant.
A 33-year-old man who recently returned from South Africa has been found positive for the new Omicron variant, informed the Maharashtra Health Department on Saturday. This is the first case of the variant in Maharashtra.
The concerned person's sample was taken in Delhi which was genome sequenced at the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune.
The person, a resident of Thane, Maharashtra, is currently at a Medical Isolation Facility in Mumbai. He arrived in Mumbai on November 24 from Capetown, South Africa through Dubai and Delhi. He hasn't taken any vaccine. 12 of his high-risk contacts and 23 of the low-risk contacts have been traced and all have been tested negative for COVID-19, said the Maharashtra Health Department.
In a first in Gujarat, a 72-year-old man who came from Zimbabwe has been infected with Omicron, the state health department confirmed. "On Nov 28, the man who had arrived from Zimbabwe tested COVID-19 positive. After studying genome sequencing, the Omicron variant was confirmed. The patient is in isolation and is stable. We're following the SOP to tackle the situation," confirmed Dr Sourabh Paridhi, District Collector, Jamnagar.
The first two cases of Omicron were reported in Karnataka.
(with agency inputs)
