Mumbai/New Delhi: A 33-year-old man from Thane district near Mumbai who had arrived at the Delhi airport from South Africa via Dubai before flying to the Maharashtra capital has tested positive for the Omicron variant of coronavirus, making him the first such case in Maharashtra and fourth in India, officials said on Saturday.
He 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.
The man has a mild fever but no other symptoms of COVID-19 infection are seen in him, an official statement said.
Cases with the Omicron variant have already been detected in Karnataka and Gujarat.
“A man from Kalyan Dombivli municipal corporation area has tested positive for the Omicron variant of COVID-19. He is the first official case of the Omicron variant in the state,” Maharashtra health department director Dr Archana Patil told PTI in Mumbai. “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,” she said.
In a statement, the Maharashtra health department said the infected man, a resident of the KDMC area, has not yet taken any vaccine. He is admitted to a COVID care centre in Dombivli.
“He returned from South Africa on November 24 to Mumbai via Dubai and Delhi. He has a mild fever but no other symptoms of COVID-19 infection are seen,” the department said.
All the 12 persons (relatives and co-travellers of the infected man) who were considered as “high risk” have been traced and tested for COVID-19. Their results are negative. Another 23 persons, including fellow passengers of the infected man, have tested negative as well, the department said.
Meanwhile, a 60-year-old resident of Pune in Maharashtra has tested positive for coronavirus after returning from Zambia but his genome sequencing revealed that he was infected with a Delta variant sub-lineage, it said.
A KDMC official said the man who tested positive for the Omicron variant is an engineer.
Six persons who had travelled from different countries to Dombivli-Kalyan area have tested positive for coronavirus so far and isolated,” said Dr Pratibha Panpatil, chief of Epidemic Control Cell, KDMC.
Four of them are from Nigeria and one each is from Russia and Nepal.
Meanwhile, with 8,603 people testing positive for coronavirus infection in a day, India’s tally of COVID-19 cases rose to 3,46,24,360, but active cases declined to 99,974, according to Union Health Ministry data updated on Saturday.
The death toll, however, climbed to 4,70,530 with 415 fatalities reported on Saturday, the data released at 8 am showed. The daily rise in coronavirus infections has been less than 50,000 for 160 consecutive days now.
The active cases have declined to 99,974, comprising 0.29 per cent of the total infections, the lowest since March 2020, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate was recorded at 98.35 per cent, the health ministry said.
A net decrease of two cases has been recorded in the active COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours, according to the ministry.
The daily positivity rate was recorded at 0.69 per cent. It has been less than 2 per cent for past 61 days now.
The weekly positivity rate was also recorded at 0.81 per cent. It has been below 1 per cent for the past 20 days, the ministry data showed.