Covid: India’s third confirmed case of Omicron variant is from Gujarat

A 72-year-old man has been found infected with the Omicron variant of coronavirus in Jamnagar city of Gujarat following his return from Zimbabwe, the state health department said on Saturday.

The sample of the elderly man was sent for genome sequencing, after he tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday, it said.

Gujarat’s Commissioner of Health Jai Prakash Shivhare confirmed that the man was found infected with the Omicron strain.His sample has been sent to Pune.

Earlier, two persons had tested positive for this variant in Karnataka. The Omicron strain has been marked as a “variant of concern” by the World Health Organization (WHO).

“The man is a native of Jamnagar and has been living in Zimbabwe for the last many years. He arrived here on November 28 to meet his father-in-law. After he got a fever, his doctor advised him to get an RT-PCR test done. As mandated, the private laboratory informed us today that his report has come out positive for COVID-19,” Jamnagar municipal commissioner Vijaykumar Kharadi told PTI on December 2.

A new variant of COVID-19 was first reported to the World Health Organisation (WHO) from South Africa on November 25. As per the WHO, the first known confirmed B.1.1.529 infection was from a specimen collected on November 9 this year.

On November 26, the WHO named the new COVID-19 variant B.1.1.529, which has been detected in South Africa, as ‘Omicron’. The WHO has classified Omicron as a ‘variant of concern’.

Dozens of countries have imposed travel restrictions on the southern African nations since the mutation was discovered.

The new Omicron coronavirus variant has been confirmed in 23 countries and their number is expected to rise, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had said.

India has also added several countries to the list from where travellers would need to follow additional measures on arrival in the country, including post-arrival testing for infection.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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