Bengaluru, Dec. 2: After detection of two cases of Omicron, Karnataka health minister, Dr K. Sudhakar on Thursday said that both patients who have been detected with Omicron variant in the state had received both doses of anti-Covid vaccination.
After a meeting with health experts and bureaucrats concerned here, Dr Sudhakar said that the 46-year-old patient who tested Omicron positive is a medical practitioner working in a government facility in Bengaluru and was fully vaccinated.
“As soon as he developed symptoms of fever and body ache on November 21, being a medical practitioner, he isolated himself in home quarantine. But, after he tested Omicron positive three of his 13 primary and two of his 205 secondary contacts have tested Covid positive. All six have been kept under special isolation wards in Bengaluru,” he explained.
According to the minister, the five samples of these patients will also be sent for genome sequencing test to the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) and the state is awaiting for the report to know whether these five have contracted Omicron or not.
About the 66-year-old South African national who tested Omicron positive, Dr Sudhkar said that he was not much worried about South African testing Omicron positive. “As many as 24 of his primary, and 240 secondary contacts were tested and all found to be negative. But theyare still under watch. What is more worrisome as a minister to me is a person with no travel history getting detected with the Omicron variant,” he observed.
The minister reiterated that the state government would intensify its screening at airports as well as on all bordering areas in order to keep track of spread of this virus.
“Although Omicron is not as virulent as the Delta variant of the Covid virus, which was first detected in Karnataka about nine months ago. All those nations which have detected Omicron, have stated that Omicron spreads faster than all its previous mutants, but not as terrifying as some of its predecessor variants,” he claimed.
