6 Infected Travellers Arrived In Odisha From 3 Countries; Samples From COVID Clusters Also Being Sequenced

Bhubaneswar: Six travellers have tested positive for COVID-19 since their arrival in Odisha, since November 26, when WHO designated B.1.1.529 strain of COVID-19 as a variant of concern and named it Omicron.

“We are verifying veracity of the reports on six more foreign returnees testing positive. Efforts are on to trace all returnees from at-risk countries at district micro-level,” said Director of Health Services Bijay Mohapatra.

According to official sources, 800-odd people have returned to Odisha from the UK, South Africa, Brazil, Botswana, China, Zimbabwe, Mauritius, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore and Israel, which were placed in the ‘at-risk’ category, since November 26.

Those who have test tested positive had returned from Dubai, Uganda and Saudi Arabia, the sources said.

On Monday, the Health Department had informed that 40 per cent of the returnees are yet to be traced. Some of those travellers had reportedly entered wrong addresses and contact numbers in the Air Suvidha portal.

“We cannot outrightly say that they are avoiding us or we are unable to trace them,” he added.

On Monday, Director of Public Health Dr Niranjan Mishra had, however, said more than 300 of the 800-odd returnees are not cooperating with the health officials engaged to track them and arrange their testing on the eighth day of their arrival in accordance with the guidelines.

This raised concern over the possible spread of Omicron in the state.

Currently, 246 samples are under genome sequencing to detect the presence of the highly-mutated variant, including those of foreign travellers and COVID clusters of Burla and Mayurbhanj, informed Director of Medical Education & Training (DMET) Rama Raman Mohanty.

The DMET, however, said that he did not have the data of foreign returnees who have tested positive for COVID.

He asserted that there was no cause to panic as recent studies suggested that the symptoms associated with the variant were mild and the patients were responding to the conventional treatment of COVID.

Institute of Life Science (ILS), Bhubaneswar, Director Ajay Parida on Monday had informed that the report of genome sequencing will be out by Friday.