A person returning from souther Africa's 'at-risk' nation tested positive for the newly occurred Covid-19 Omicrin variant in Gujarat's Jamnagar here on Saturday, the state health department confirmed.
The traveller, a 72-year-old man, came to Jamnagar from South Africa two days ago. After testing positive for the new COVID variant during screening at the airport, the authorities sent the person's sample for genome sequencing to a lab-based in Pune, which disclosed that the person was infected with Omicron.
According to Jamnagar municipal commissioner, Vijay Kharadi, three people of Indian origin had returned to Jamnagar from Zimbabwe last week.
"The man is a native of Jamnagar and has been living in Zimbabwe for the last many years. He arrived here on 28 November to meet his father-in-law. After he got a fever, his doctor advised him to get an RT-PCR test done. As mandated, the private laboratory informed us today that his report has come out positive for COVID-19 ," the civic chief said.
The test reports of the other two persons are pending. Samples for genome sequencing have been sent to verify the variant.
This is the third confirmed case of the Omicron variant in India. The other two confirmed cases in India are of a 46-year-old fully vaccinated doctor from Bengaluru, who had no travel history and developed symptoms of fever and body ache, and a 66-year-old South African national who came to India with a negative COVID-19 report.
(with inputs from sources)
