India’s fourth Omicron case was reported in Mumbai on Saturday evening with a 33-year-old man who returned from South Africa testing positive for the new COVID-19 variant. The passenger from Kalyan Dombivli municipal area had arrived at Delhi airport on November 23 via Dubai before flying to Mumbai.
On November 24, he reported mild fever and was admitted to a Covid Care Centre at Kalyan Dombivli. Reports said he had not taken any COVID-19 vaccine.
“He came with a group of four people. We are tracing and tracking them. Their RT-PCR test as well as genome sequencing will be done as well,” said Maharashtra health department director Dr Archana Patil.
His twelve primary contacts and 23 secondary contacts have been traced so far and all have tested negative for COVID-19. Besides, 25 passengers in the Delhi-Mumbai flight in which he had travelled in have also tested negative.
According to the Maharashtra health department, 3,839 passengers who arrived from the "high risk" countries at the Mumbai international airport have undergone RT-PCR test along with 344 out of the 17,107 passengers who had arrived from other countries.
Earlier in the day, a 72-year-old man who arrived from Zimbabwe tested positive for Omicron in Gujarat’s Jamnagar. The patient is in isolation and is stable, said Jamnagar district collector Sourabh Paridhi.
India’s first two cases of Omicron were reported in Karnataka on Thursday after a South African national and a local doctor, who had no travel history, tested positive.
India has stepped up testing and surveillance of all incoming passengers especially from the ‘at risk’ countries since the Omicron variant was first detected in South Africa. The WHO has classified Omicron as a ‘variant of concern’.
