Two persons from Odisha who recently returned from Nigeria and Qatar were detected with Omicron variant of COVID19 during genome sequencing at the Institute of Life Science(ILS) here, health officials said here on Tuesday.
ILS sources on Tuesday said the genome sequencing of the samples of all the COVID cases from Odisha conducted at the institute’s laboratory since November 2021 revealed the presence of Omicron variant in two cases so far.
While one of them had just returned from Nigeria, the other one had come from Qatar. Both of them belonged to the coastal districts of Cuttack and Jagatsinghpur.
Meanwhile, 146 new COVID positive cases were detected in the state from 16 districts in the past 24 hours taking the cumulative tally of 10,53,166.
Out of 146 new infections, Khordha district reported a maximum number of 72 cases followed by Cuttack ( 14). The other 14 districts recorded cases in single digit. At least 25 of the positive cases were found in the age group of 0 to 18 years.
During the same period only one COVID related death was reported during the health audit from Khurda district taking the total fatalities in the state to 8,446.
The COVID recoveries surged to 10,42,875 with 174 more patients recovering from the virus on Monday while the active cases further declined to 1,792 of which Khordha district alone accounted for 848 cases the highest in the state followed by 142 in Cuttack district.
The Test Positivity Rate(TPR) in the state which has been showing a rising trend for last three days started declining from 0.34 percent on Monday to 0.27 percent on Tuesday as out of 52,434 tests conducted in the state in the past 24 hours only 146 tested COVID positive.
However, two districts Khordha in Coastal Odisha and Deogarh in Western Odisha have reported TPR 1.9 percent and 1.2 percent respectively. As many as 16 districts in the state have reported the TPR asbelow one percent while 12 districts have reported zero test positivity rate.
According to reports, while one of the affected persons had returned from Nigeria recently, the other arrived from Qatar. They reportedly returned to Jagatsinghpur and Khordha respectively.
However, there has been no official confirmation about the details of the infected persons so far.
