Thane: A 33-year-old engineer, who recently returned to India from South Africa, has tested positive for Omicron variant of COVID-19 here, Kalyan Dombivli civic body official informed on Saturday. Briefing about the case further, Epidemic Control Cell chief Dr. Pratibha Panpatil stated that the traveler arrived in India via Dubai on November 24.
As he was detected COVID positive, he was kept in isolation and his samples were sent for Genome Sequencing and the result was received this evening, she told.
In Maharashtra, he is the first patient to contract Omicron, which is a new strain of the pandemic, she said. Taking swift action, 12 close contacts and 23 other contacts of the engineer were tested and found to be negative. Besides this, his 25 co-passengers travelling with him between Delhi and Mumbai were also tested and found to be negative, she underscored.
The Kalyan Dombivli civic body’s medical team is keeping a close watch on the patient and monitoring his situation, she mentioned. She further said that other six persons who had travelled from different countries into Dombivili-Kalyan were kept in isolation after testing COVID positive. The condition of all of them are stable as they are asymptomatic, she added.
Among six, four came from Nigeria, and one each from Russia and Nepal; none of the countries come in the category of high-risk nations, she clarified. So far total 4 such cases have been detected in the the country. Earlier in the day, one Omicron case was detected in Gujarat after a 72-year old man, who had returned to Jamnagar from Zimbabwe, tested positive for the new variant. First two cases of the variant was detected in Karnataka.
