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After 2 Omicron cases, Karnataka government says 57 African passengers missing
The African nationals arrived in Bengaluru between November 12 and 22, according to officials from BBMP (the Bengaluru municipal corporation), who said that several of them switched off their phones or provided false addresses
A day after two cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus was detected in Karnataka, the government said that 57 international passengers, who arrived from African countries, remained untraceable after arrival at Bengaluru airport.
Officials said efforts were on to trace them, and that expressed confidence that they would be tracked down soon.
“Priority has been given to trace those 57 passengers from Africa. In the past, our police department has done a good job of tracking down those who have escaped. And our police demonstrate their efficiency and will track them all. But I urge the passengers to act responsibly and with social concern,” health minister Dr K Sudhakar said.
These African nationals arrived in Bengaluru between November 12 and 22, according to officials from BBMP (the Bengaluru municipal corporation), who said that several of them switched off their phones or provided false addresses.
The officials realised they were incommunicado when they tried contacting them to send samples for genomic sequencing to ascertain if they had the Omicron variant.
Talking to reporters after the high-level meeting chaired by chief minister Basavaraj Bommai, revenue minister R Ashok said the missing international passengers will be tracked down Friday midnight. “They will be tracked and tested. The authorities have been given directions in this regard,” he said.
Even in the case of patient number one, the authorities had failed to track him. While talking to the media on Friday, health minister Sudhakar had said that the government was aware of patient number one leaving the country. However, a statement from police officers tasked with tracking him said that he left the country without informing authorities.
India’s Omicron patient number one is a South African who landed in Bengaluru on November 20. The p 66-year-old patient had his samples were collected on November 20 at the Kempegowda international airport on the day of his arrival from South Africa via Dubai.
A report from BBMP said that after the Covid test, he checked into a hotel in the city. After he tested positive, a doctor from the Urban Primary Health Care Centre visited him for a physical triage and found him to be asymptomatic. He was asked to isolate himself at the hotel. “On November 22, his test samples were collected and sent for genomic sequencing via BBMP,” said the report.
It further added that the patient took a self-examination on November 23 and was tested negative. On getting this negative report at 12.34 am on November 28, he left for Dubai from where he had come to the country.
A senior Bengaluru police officer said that on November 27, health department officials had asked police to track this South African national, since his genome sequencing report was still awaited, and he was incommunicado. “That night we tracked him and by the time we got his location he was already on the flight to Dubai,” said the senior officer who requested anonymity.
The revenue minister claimed they were aware of his departure, however, on Friday afternoon summoned the Bengaluru police commissioner to Chief Minister’s residence. Hours later Ashok told reporters that a case will be filed with the High Court police station in Bengaluru to investigate which lab issued the negative certificate to patient number one and if the hotel authorities violated any norms. “We’ve lodged a complaint with the police, and they will see what went wrong at the Shangri-La hotel, from where the person escaped,” said Ashok.
A senior BBMP official admitted that there have been “slip-ups from authorities”. “We still don’t know from where patient number one got the variant. The lack of answers could only mean that the variant is already present in the city. It is possible that before the variant was first detected in South Africa, it arrived in Bengaluru. There is nothing much we can do in such a situation because we didn’t know about this variant,” said the official who didn’t want to be named.
“But officials who were responsible for tracking international passengers have failed because a patient left the country without permission and now international passengers are missing. We can’t point fingers at anyone, it is a collective failure,” the officer added.
Ashok told media on Friday that the BBMP or any other agencies have not been able to identify how the 44-year-old man without travel history got the new variant.
