Close Contacts of Maharashtra's First Omicron Patient Test Negative

The 33-year-old man had developed mild fever after returning from South Africa & has no other symptoms.

Representative Image. 

(Photo: PTI)

A 33-year-old man who returned to Mumbai from South Africa's Cape Town – with transits in Dubai and Delhi – has tested positive for the Omicron variant of COVID-19.

With this, the resident of Kalyan-Dombivli municipal area near Mumbai has become the forth person to test positive for the variant of interest within India and the first in the state.

The patient, who returned to Mumbai on 24 November, is not vaccinated and had developed mild fever the same day, without any further complications. He is presently being treated at a Covid Care center in Kalyan.

Meanwhile, 12 high risk and 32 low-risk contacts of the patient have tested negative for the virus. A test run on 25 passengers of his Delhi-Mumbai flight, too, has come back negative.

Till this morning, all the 3839 passengers from high-risk countries have been RT-PCR checked at Mumbai International Airport and out of 17,107 passengers from other countries, 344 passengers have been RT-PCR checked.

An inspection at the Mumbai airport from December 1 till date has found 8 passengers infected with Covid-19 and their samples have been sent for genetic testing. Apart from this, a regional survey of international travelers arriving in the state from November 1 is also underway.

While two people in Karnataka were among the first to test positive for the Omicron variant in the country, a 71-year-old non-resident Indian, who arrived in Gujarat's Jamnagar from Zimbabwe, was detected with the variant of interest.