12 Covid +ve foreigners test negative within 5 days

PATNA: Twelve of the 16 foreigners who had tested Covid-19 positive at Gaya recently, have tested negative within five days, allaying fears of higher severity of the fourth wave of the pandemic, as the government allowed them to cut short their prescribed seven-day isolation period in a hotel, said Gaya’s civil surgeon, Dr Ranjan Kumar Singh, on Sunday

PATNA: Twelve of the 16 foreigners who had tested Covid-19 positive at Gaya recently, have tested negative within five days, allaying fears of higher severity of the fourth wave of the pandemic, as the government allowed them to cut short their prescribed seven-day isolation period in a hotel, said Gaya’s civil surgeon, Dr Ranjan Kumar Singh, on Sunday.

At Patna railway junction on Saturday. (HT Photo)

The foreigners, mostly from Myanmar and Thailand, had tested positive between December 23 and 30 during random testing at the Gaya international airport when they came to attend the Dalai Lama’s three-day religious discourse, which ended at Gaya’s Kalchakra Maidan on Saturday. Around 1 lakh pilgrims attended the event, held after two years.

“Four foreigners, presently under isolation, will be tested tomorrow on the fifth day of testing positive. Their isolation period will end depending on the result of their test. They are absolutely fine and are showing no symptoms of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We have curtailed the isolation period of the remaining 12, who tested negative within five days of reporting positive on the real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test during their random sampling at the Gaya airport. The positive cases have now come down and there is absolutely nothing to panic,”said Dr Singh.

As per the Centre’s guidelines, Covid-19 asymptomatic patients, showing no health complications, do not need to be re-tested before their release from a health facility or isolation after seven days of testing positive, he said.

“We re-tested within five days those who tested Covid-19 positive after a 60-year old woman from the United Kingdom came up with a negative result on the third day of having tested positive,” Dr Singh said.

Altogether 22 people, 16 foreigners and six locals, including five who tested positive during random sampling at the Dumaria primary health centre recently, have so far tested Covid-19 positive at Gaya. The district has sent all 22 samples for genome sequencing at Patna’s Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences but was awaiting its result to ascertain the variant and sub-variant of the SARS CoV-2 virus.

The state had not reported any case of BF.7 sub-variant of Omicron so far, Bihar’s additional chief secretary, health, Pratyaya Amrit had told a TV news channel on December 28. He said the state’s health infrastructure is fully prepared to tackle any eventuality, should it arise, and that there is nothing to panic.

Many countries, including China, Japan, the USA, Korea, and Brazil, have reported a spurt in Covid-19 cases, having Omicron BF.7 sub-variant, prompting the Indian government to be alert.