After Gujarati, Mumbai man back from South Africa found with Omicron

A man from Kalyan Dombivli municipal area near Mumbai who had arrived at the Delhi airport from South Africa via Dubai before flying to Mumbai has tested positive for the Omicron variant of coronavirus, officials said on Saturday, adding that it is the first such case from Maharashtra.

The 33-year-old man had arrived in Delhi on November 23 and had given his samples for COVID-19 testing at the Delhi airport. He had then taken a flight to Mumbai, official sources said in Delhi.

Earlier in the day, a man who arrived Jamnagar, Gujarat, from Zimbabwe has been found infected with Omicron – India’s third of the latest variant of coronavirus.

The sample of the Jamnagar resident, a 72-year-old man, was sent for genome sequencing after he tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday, PTI reported, quoting the state health department. State Health Commissioner Jai Prakash Shivhare confirmed that the man was found infected with Omicron, the news agency said.

A micro-containment zone has been created where the man stays and officials are tracing and testing people there.

“We’ve isolated him and are monitoring him. A micro-containment zone has been made where he is living. In the area, we will do the tracing, testing of people,” Manoj Aggarwal, additional chief secretary, Health and Family Welfare Department, Gujarat, said.

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The two other Omicron 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.

The World Health Organization has said it could take weeks to determine whether Omicron is more transmissible and whether it causes more severe infections – as well as how effective current treatments and vaccines are against it. But the new variant has already cast the world’s recovery into doubt. More than two dozen nations, including India, have now detected cases of the variant.

Nearly half of India’s 944 million adults have been fully vaccinated. As many as 84 per cent have received at least one dose, with more than 125 million people eligible now as the government pushes more to get inoculated in the face of Omicron.