Bengaluru: The Karnataka government is on the lookout for more than 10 passengers who reportedly went “missing” from the airport after two passengers were found positive for Omicron in Karnataka. One of the patients have been reported to have “escaped” after taking a Covid negative certificate from a private lab, the state government said on Friday.
A 66-year-old South African national found to be Omicron-infected “fled”, the state’s revenue minister said. Around 57 others who arrived around the same time will also be tested, even though they all produced negative RT-PCR tests on arrival. The 10 people labeled “missing” have switched off their phones and cannot be contacted.
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The person arrived on November 20 from South Africa and left for Dubai even days later. “We’ve lodged a complaint with the police and they will see what went wrong at the Shangri-La hotel, from where the person escaped,” said the minister.
The man, fully vaccinated, checked into the hotel the day he arrived and was found to be positive for COVID-19. He had arrived with a negative Covid test report.
When a government doctor visited him at the hotel, he was found to be asymptomatic and was advised to self-isolate.
But since he was from one of the nations designated "at-risk", his samples were collected again and sent for genome sequencing on November 22.
Twenty-four people who came in contact with him were tested and found to be negative. The authorities also tested 240 secondary contacts - people who had come in contact with the primary contacts of the patent - and found them to be negative as well.
On November 23, the man took another test at a private lab and the result came back negative.
On November 27, around midnight, he checked out of the hotel, took a cab to the airport and boarded a flight to Dubai.
The person was already declared positive for Omicron, but he fled.
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