Bengaluru, Dec. 7: A 46-year-old Bengaluru doctor, who is among the country’s first two cases of Omicron variant that were first detected in Karnataka, has again tested positive for Covid, a senior official said here on Tuesday.
Karnataka is the first state in the country to report two cases of Omicron – a 46-year-old medical practitioner working in a government facility and a 66-year-old man is a South African national were tested Omicron positive on December 2. Omicron is the newest variant of Covid virus that has mutated a number of times since it was first detected in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 and has set off a global pandemic.
According to the Bengaluru Civic Body (Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike- BBMP) senior official, the RT-PCR test was conducted seven days after his last test, as per the mandate issued by the Health ministry. “He will be kept under observation for another seven days and be discharged only after a negative RT-PCR test,” the official told reporters on the condition of anonymity.
The doctor has received both doses of anti-Covid vaccine (Covishield). He was previously tested positive on November 22, after his CT (Cyclic Threshold) level fell alarmingly low as a result of this his samples were sent to genomic sequencing test in New Delhi, where it was confirmed that he had contracted a new variant Omicron in his samples.
Five people who had come in contact with this doctor, who had tested positive, returned negative tests and will be discharged on Tuesday. The five samples had been sent for genome sequencing, the results of which are still awaited.
