Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) officials on Friday said the civic agency will expand contact tracing of patient number two to identify the source of Omicron variant in him.
A day after the new Covid-19 variant was identified in two patients, officials of the health department and BBMP remain clueless about how a person got infected with the Omicron variant of the coronavirus any history of international travel.
Talking to HT, KV Trilok Chandra, special commissioner (health), said since the officials have not been able to identify the source of the infection, the civic agency will increase the contact tracing of the patient.
“The contacts traced so far are for a few days before his infection. We will now expand to a few more weeks and if need be, we will track his contacts for the last month. We will have to trace to contacts of his contacts as well. We will be doing this in the coming days,” said the official.
The second case of Omicron reported in Karnataka was that of a 46-year-old resident of Bengaluru and was working as a health care worker.
BBMP commissioner Gaurav Gupta told HT that patient number two didn’t have any contact with the South African national, who was patient number one.
Health minister Dr K Sudhakar further confirmed that he was a doctor working with a private hospital in the city. He developed fever and body ache on November 21 and tested positive the next day. Since he had a low CT value (which indicates a high viral load), his sample was sent for genomic sequencing.
{{/usCountry}}Health minister Dr K Sudhakar further confirmed that he was a doctor working with a private hospital in the city. He developed fever and body ache on November 21 and tested positive the next day. Since he had a low CT value (which indicates a high viral load), his sample was sent for genomic sequencing.
{{/usCountry}}This patient had 13 primary contacts and 205 secondary contacts. Out of which, three primary contacts and two secondary contacts have tested positive for Covid. They are currently at a government hospital, and they are not showing any severe symptoms. The five contacts of patient number two have no travel history didn’t have any travel history either.
A health care expert, who is aware of the developments, said the patient is a doctor with a renowned hospital in the city. While he confirmed that he hadn’t travelled abroad, he had participated in an international conference at a five-star hotel on November 20, however, there were no overseas delegates.