Mumbai: Three people from Mumbai, all foreign returnees, have been found positive for BF.7 variant. These are the first such cases of the new variant – which is said to be the reason behind China's Covid surge – in Maharashtra.
Two of them have come from China and one has come from Canada following which their samples were sent for whole genome sequencing. All three of them are stable and don't require any hospitalisation. There is no need to worry as all these patients had mild symptoms and were vaccinated, said the senior health officer.
So far, samples of 23 travellers – who were found positive during the RT-PCR test at Mumbai airport – have been sent for whole genome sequencing. Of them, five are from Mumbai followed by Gujarat (4), Pune (3), Kerala (2) and one each from Navi Mumbai, Amravati, Sangli, Goa, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Odisha and Telangana.
A senior official from the state health department said that the Centre has directed every state to send all positive RT-PCR samples for genome sequencing considering the case surge in China. “Earlier, we used to pick samples of serious or admitted patients or those who had re-infection after vaccination and patients from particular clusters for genome sequencing,” he added.
