Six passengers from "At-Risk" countries test Covid positive

Six people who flew into Delhi from "at-risk" countries, including the UK and the Netherlands, on Wednesday have been admitted to the Lok Nayak Hospital after four of them tested positive for COVID-19 and two "showed symptoms". These are six out of 3,476 passengers from the at risk countries tested on arrival at airports across the country on December 1, the first day of implementation of the Centre’s revised guidelines for Covid testing. According to official sources, their samples have been sent to the National Centre for Disease Control for genome sequencing to ascertain if they have the new variant, Omicron. There are 11 countries on India’s “at risk” list currently, and travellers coming from these countries will have to follow additional measures.

The United States has announced its first confirmed case of Omicron, the new variant of Covid, in a traveller who has recently returned from South Africa. This is the first known case of the new variant, first identified by South African scientists, in the US, as several reports now suggest that the variant was present in Europe before South Africa reported the first case. Much about the new variant is not known yet, but its emergence has created fresh apprehension across the world with most of the countries putting travel restrictions.

Meanwhile, the health department in Madhya Pradesh's Indore is looking for 100 people who returned from abroad over the past one month. So far, we have traced 50 people, out of about 150 who returned home in Indore from abroad during the last one month. Samples of the 50 traced persons were tested and none of them were found to be infected with Covid-19, search is on for the remaining 100 people so that their samples can also be collected and tested,according to CM&HO, Indore.