Health officers have identified 12 primary contacts of a person who tested positive for the Omicron variant of coronavirus in Belagavi. This is the first Omicron case outside Bengaluru. All the 13 persons, including the patient, are non-symptomatic and healthy, officers said.
The 52-year-old person had travelled from Nigeria to Belagavi via Bengaluru and Hyderabad. He gave samples for COVID-19 testing in Bengaluru, and officers asked him “to go to Belagavi and stay quarantined at home”. He had asked to be let off and he told officers that he had to catch a connecting flight in two hours.
However, he tested positive on arrival at Belagavi airport on Tuesday. Officers in the airport at Sambra recommend home quarantine for him. He stayed at a different home for quarantine. His swab samples were sent for genome sequencing.
Officers shifted him to the COVID-19 centre in the Belagavi Institute of Medical Sciences on Thursday. He had taken two doses of Covishield vaccine in Nigeria. However, he had a negative report when he arrived in India.
