India's first Omicron patient left for Dubai week after testing positive: Records
Bengaluru/IBNS: A 66-year-old man, who has become one of India's first two cases of the Omicron Covid variant to have arrived in the country on Nov 20, left for Dubai on a flight seven days later, official records showed on Thursday.
According to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), Bengaluru's municipal corporation, the man arrived from South Africa with a negative COVID-19 test report on Nov 20 at the city's international airport.
He had been vaccinated with both doses of a coronavirus vaccine.
Besides him, another 46-year-old man has also been infected by the new variant of coronavirus that has triggered a global alarm.
Upon his arrival, the 66-year-old man checked into a hotel the same day and was found to be positive for COVID-19.
When a government doctor visited him at the hotel, he was found to be asymptomatic and was advised to self-isolate.
However, since he was a traveller from one of the nations designated "at-risk" given the Omicron breakout, his samples were collected again and sent for genome sequencing on Nov 22.
All 24 people who came in contact with him were tested and found to be negative for COVID-19.
On Nov 23, the man took another COVID-19 test at a private lab and the result came back negative.
On Nov 27, around midnight, he checked out of the hotel, took a cab to the airport and boarded a flight to Dubai.
While giving the information, the health ministry's joint secretary Lav Agarwal told a news briefing that both the cases were detected in Karnataka.
The identity of the infected patients were not revealed to protect their privacy.
All the contacts of both the patients have been traced and they are being tested.
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