Jamnagar, 10 December
Jamnagar Municipal Corporation (JMC) officials said that the wife and brother-in-law of an NRI man, who had tested positive for the Omicron variant of Covid here in Gujarat a week ago, was also diagnosed with the new strain. Friday.
Gujarat now has three Omicron patients, who were classified by the WHO as ‘type of concern’ after being detected in Africa last month.
Officials said genome sequencing of swab samples at the Gujarat Biotechnology Research Center (GBRC) in Gandhinagar has established that both the Covid patients were also infected with the Omicron variant.
A JMC release said they have been shifted to a special Omicron ward maintained at the government-run Guru Gobind Singh Government Hospital in the city.
On December 4, genome sequencing of the swab sample established that a 72-year-old NRI man who arrived here from Zimbabwe, one of the countries classified as “at risk” by the central government, had contracted the Omicron variant.
The next day, the wife of the NRI man who accompanied him from Zimbabwe and his brother-in-law, who lives in Jamnagar, tested positive for coronavirus.
Their swab samples were sent to the GBRC to find out if they were infected with the Omicron variant, the release said.
Genomic sequencing is a process to decode the gene in SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID, to help scientists identify which variant may be present in swab samples.
No other family member or school student who attended home tuition of the brother-in-law of an NRI person tested positive for coronavirus during the contact tracing and testing exercise.
As a precaution, the Municipal Corporation had banned the movement of people by declaring the residential society, where the family of the NRI lives, as a micro-containment zone.
The release said that as per the instructions, the officials took the exercise of giving the Kovid vaccine to those people of the area who have not taken the first or second dose till date. PTI