India's first Omicron patient left Dubai after testing positive

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• Dec 3, 2021 | moderator

Bengaluru: India is on alert after detecting Omicron cases this week. India has detected two positive cases of Omicron lately. Among the two patients, a 66-year-old man who became the first patient from India left the country for Dubai after seven days of testing positive.  

As per official records, the man arrived from South Africa with a negative COVID-19 test report on November 20. He had been injected with both doses of a coronavirus vaccine.

On his arrival, he checked into a hotel the same day and was found to be positive for COVID-19. A government doctor visited him at the hotel. After tests, it was found that he was asymptomatic and was encouraged to self-isolate.

With the concern raised among people for the outbreak of Omicron, the government decided to take his samples for further tests. His samples were collected again and sent for genome sequencing on November 22.

Everyone who came in contact with the traveler was tested as well. The test reports indicated that all 24 people in contact with the foreign traveler tested negative for COVID-19. 

The authorities further tested 240 secondary connections, and these were the people who had come in contact with the primary contacts of the patient.

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Once again, on November 23, the man took another COVID-19 test at a private laboratory, and the result came negative. On November 27, he checked out of the hotel and boarded a flight to Dubai.

On Thursday, the Union Health Ministry officially confirmed that the foreign traveler had been detected with the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. His name and status have not been revealed to protect his privacy, Health Ministry's Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal stated.

Besides him, a 46-year-old health worker in Bengaluru has been tested positive for the Omicron variant.

Omicron was first detected in South Africa. It is a highly infectious strain which implies a fresh challenge to global efforts to fight the deadly coronavirus pandemic.