A 66-year-old man who has become one of India's first two cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant arrived in the country on November 20 and left for Dubai on a flight seven days later.
According to a report, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), Bengaluru's municipal corporation, the man arrived from South Africa with a negative COVID-19 test report on November 20 at the city's international airport.
When a government doctor visited him at the hospital, he was found to be asymptomatic and advised to self-isolate at the hotel.
Being a traveller from one of the nations designated "at-risk" given the Omicron breakout, his samples were collected again and sent for genome sequencing on November 22.
Two cases of #Omicron detected in Karnataka | One of the two patients is a 66-year-old male while the other is a 46-year-old male. The former had returned from South Africa (via Dubai) and was fully vaccinated: Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP)#COVID19 pic.twitter.com/5YqkyLiLAj
— ANI (@ANI) December 2, 2021
All 24 people who came in contact with him were tested and found to be negative for COVID-19. The authorities also reached 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.
Separately, on November 23, the man also took another COVID-19 test at a private lab and the result came back negative.
Meanwhile, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraja S Bommai today called on Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya and discussed about the new COVID-19 variant 'Omicron', on the day it was announced that two cases of the variant have been detected in the southern state.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Bommai noted that he also discussed administering booster dose of the vaccine against COVID-19 to health workers.
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