Mumbai : A total of four cases of the new Covid-19 variant Omicron have been detected from India so far. A 33-year-old man from Maharashtra who travelled to Mumbai from South Africa via Dubai and Delhi late last month has tested positive for the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, this is fourth such case confirmed in India.
According to an official quoted by news agency PTI, he had not taken any COVID-19 vaccine since he had been at sea for months as a marine engineer. On 24th November, the passenger reported mild fever after landing in Mumbai and is being treated at the Covid Care Centre in Kalyan-Dombivali.
“He was working on a private merchant navy ship and left the country in April when the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic was at its peak. At that time, vaccine doses were available only for healthcare and frontline workers,” according to officials.
Twelve of the passenger’s high-risk contacts and 23 low-risk contacts have been traced and all have tested negative for COVID-19. Additionally, 25 of his co-passengers from the Delhi-Mumbai flight have also tested negative. More contacts are currently being traced.
Omicron In Maharashtra
The Maharashtra government also said that the Omicron variant has not been detected in tests conducted on a 60-year-old man who had arrived from Zambia, who has instead been found to be positive for “a sub-lineage of Delta variant”.
Omicron In Jamnagar
Earlier in the day, a man who returned from Zimbabwe was found infected with the Omicron variant of coronavirus in Gujarat’s Jamnagar, the state health department said, in the third case of the strain in India.
Omicron In Karnataka
The other two cases in India are of a 46-year-old fully vaccinated doctor from Bengaluru, who had no travel history and developed symptoms of fever and body ache, and a 66-year-old South African national who came to India with a negative COVID-19 report.
Nearly half of India’s 944 million adults have been fully vaccinated. As many as 84 per cent have received at least one dose, with more than 125 million people eligible now as the government pushes more to get inoculated in the face of Omicron.
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