Omicron positive Tanzania returnee tests negative

Mumbai: A 40-years old Dharavi resident, who was found Omicron positive after returning from Tanzania on December 10 was tested negative on Monday morning.

He is the fourth person in Mumbai who tested negative for Covid-19 after testing positive with the Omicron variant. Since the last two weeks, a total of five Omicron positive patients were admitted to the civic hospital out of which, four have turned negative and three have been discharged, according to civic officials. The Dharavi patient has not been discharged yet since he will be monitored further, officials said.

Dr Balkrishna Adsul, dean of Seven Hills hospital where the Omicron patients are undergoing treatment said that after a patient is admitted an RT-PCR test is conducted after every seven days depending on the symptoms to check if he is still positive or not.

The patient from Dharavi landed in Mumbai on December 4. He was shifted to Seven Hills hospital after he was found Covid positive. Further tests confirmed that he was infected with the Omicron variant.

“As per routine procedure, the patient undertook his RT-PCR test, following which the report came out to be negative. However, we haven’t discharged him yet,” said Dr Adsul. He also added the swab samples of the fifth patient who have a travel history to Namibia was sent for examination on Monday.

“So far, we have admitted 54 patients as a precautionary measure these include the close contacts of those who have been tested positive of the risky variant. Out of the total patients, more than 99% of the closed contacts turned out to be negative,” he said.

Dr Mangla Gomare, the executive health officer in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said so far no patient has tested positive for the Omicron twice.

“As per our preliminary observation the positivity lasts for less than a week, after one week, the patient compulsorily needs to undertake the test. But so far nobody is positive more than once,” said Gomare.

Dr Gautam Bhansali from Bombay Hospital, which has got permission for treating Omicron positive patients in Mumbai said that at present there is a patient undergoing treatment in his hospital who has a travel history to Paris. “The report of genome sequencing for this patient is set to arrive on Tuesday evening. Till now we have discharged three patients from our hospitals having a history of Dubai and Australia after their genome sequencing report came to be negative,” said Bhansali.