Gujarat’s Omicron tally went up by four on Sunday to take the total count in the state to 11. All have a history if international travel. The cases were reported from Gandhinagar, Anand, Rajkot and Surat. Noteworthy is the point that the four new cases come close on heels of two fully-vaccinated seniors who tested positive for the Omi strain upon return to Vadodra from Zambia.
Rajkot and Jamnagar are the two districts to have reported the Omicron variant in the Saurashtra region.
From Rajkot, the case pertains to a 23-year-old student, Tanzanian national who is currently enrolled at RK University. However, upon being notified of a South African arrival by the varsity’s authorities, the local health department proactively collected his sample. “The RTPCR was positive and the student was immediately shifted to an isolation ward at the Deendayal Upadhyay Government Hospital in Rajkot. Meanwhile, about 121 students living in the same dorm were tested and thankfully, all reports came back negative. The genome test result was available only on Sunday and confirmed the primary 23-year-old’s virus,” briefed Dr Nilesh Shah, chief district health officer, Rajkot.
The teenager from Gandhinagar tested positive at the airport, on arrival from London, on December 11. “He was sent to institutional quarantine at a private hospital and his family asked to observe isolation at home,” informed Dhaval Patel from the Gujarat Biotechnology Research Centre (GBRC), adding that the genome sequencing report was ready only on Saturday. Likewise, the 48-year-old Anand resident also returned from London and tested positive. His case, however, is the city’s first reported Omicron instance and he is currently under isolation at the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital.
The fourth instance from Surat relates to a 39-year-old woman with a travel history from Dubai. She landed with her teenage children in Surat on December 5 and the trio, fully vaccinated, tested negative at the airport. However, three days later, she took ill and reported a cold and cough.
“She underwent treatment from her family GP and on recovery, was booked to fly back to Sharjah on Dec 13. However, she tested positive at the Surat airport and was sent back home to be under quarantine. We have initiated the test-track model and so far, her children have tested negative,” informed Dr Ashish Naik, deputy health commissioner at of the Surat Municipal Corporation.
