Covid-19: Mumbai and rest of Maharashtra have 17 Omicron suspects each – ET HealthWorld


Covid-19: Mumbai and rest of Maharashtra have 17 Omicron suspects each
MUMBAI/KALYAN: A merchant navy engineer has tested positive for the Omicrin variant of Covid-19 in Dombivli. The reports of other Omicron suspects from Mumbai could be available in a day or two from the gene sequencing laboratory at Kasturba Hospital, near Chinchpokli, said AMC Suresh Kakani.

Mumbai has 17 Omicron suspects, of which 13 are travellers and four their contacts. An equal number of suspects are spread out across the state, said a state health official.

An update by the BMC said it has a list of 3,760 travellers to Mumbai from high-risk countries and 2,794 have been traced and tested for Covid-19.

State health department officials said 60 of the Dombivli patient’s primary and secondary contacts, including 25 co-passengers in the Delhi-Mumbai flight, had been traced and tested. “None of them tested positive for Covid,” said state surveillance officer Dr Pradeep Awate.

The whole genome sequencing report of another Omicron suspect, a 60-year-old male with a travel history to Zambia, was negative. The genomic report from the National Insititute of Virology, Pune, showed the second patient was infected by a sub-lineage of the Delta variant.

KDMC commissioner Dr Vijay Suryawanshi told reporters in Kalyan that the Omicron patient, who has been kept in institutional quarantine, is completely stable.

The merchant navy engineer on November 24 tested positive at the airport and chose home quarantine as he only had mild fever.

When the field surveillance began, the KDMC health department found out about him because his brother approached a private lab in Dombivli for a Covid-19 test. The brother told the lab staff the engineer had returned from South Africa and was Covid-positive. The lab informed KDMC health officials, who shifted him to a quarantine centre.

Maharashtra’s and Gujarat’s confirmations came two days after India’s first two cases of the Omicron variant were reported on Thursday from Karnataka: a 66-year-old South African flyer and a 46-year-old Bengaluru doctor with no travel history. Both men had been fully vaccinated.

Jamnagar officials said the 72-year-old man from the district, living for decades in Zimbabwe, had landed at Ahmedabad international airport on November 28 and travelled to Jamnagar by road with two others. He tested Covid-positive on November 30. Both persons who travelled with him are negative, said officials. All high-risk contacts of the man have tested negative, they added.

The KDMC has tested 76 travellers, of whom six are Covid-positive. Four returned from Nigeria, and one each from Russia and Nepal. All are asymptomatic.

(Inputs by Nisha Nambiar in Pune)





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