Six new Omicron cases in Maharashtra, tally reaches 54 – Times of India

MUMBAI: Six new cases of the Omicron variant were confirmed in Maharashtra on Sunday, taking the count of cases related to the variant to 54.
Four cases were picked up at the Mumbai airport surveillance, while the rest of the cases were detected from Pimpri-Chinchwad and Pune (rural). State health authorities said that 28 of the patients have already been discharged.
The civic authorities said that none of the four people found with the variant at the Mumbai airport are residents of the city.
One is a 21-year-old woman, who is a resident of Aurangabad, and had returned from the UK on December 14.
Another is a 41-year-Daman resident who also came to Mumbai from the UK on December 14.
The third case too was a 57-year-old Karnataka resident, who came to Mumbai from Tanzania on December 14, while the fourth positive case is a 38-year-old resident of Karnataka who landed at the Mumbai airport from Tanzania on December 14.
After all four tested positive at the airport, they were shifted to the SevenHills Hospital in Andheri, while their samples were sent for genome sequencing. The National Institute of Virology, Pune confirmed the variant on Sunday.
Dr Mangala Gomare, BMC’s executive health officer, said that all four individuals are fully vaccinated, and none have any symptoms.
Mumbai has treated 23 Omicron cases till now of which ten are residents and 13 had landed at the airport.
The case detected in Junnar, Pune is of a 5-year-old boy, who is a close contact of a traveller from Dubai. This patient is asymptomatic, state health officials said. At Pimpri Chinchwad, a 46-year-old man with a travel history to the Middle East has been found with the variant. “The patient has mild symptoms and is currently admitted at a private hospital. His vaccination is complete,” state health officials confirmed.
The state has carried out an RT-PCR test of nearly 22,000 travellers at the airport of which 83 have come positive for Covid-19. The state is also carrying out surveillance of people who are returning from non-risk countries. Overall, over 600 samples have been sequenced of which, 54 have been found with the variant.