Mumbai: Maharashtra confirmed the existence of Omicron in a 52-year-old man who recently died of a heart attack on Pimpri-Chinchwad, but stopped calling him the first victim of the variant and linking his death to his underlying health condition.
On Thursday, the supervision of Mumbai’s latest genome established an Omicron transmission that was widespread in the community because the variant was found in almost 37% of the sample.
Maharashtra reported 198 Omicron cases, the highest single day leap so far, took the total number of variants in the 450 state.
The man from Pimpri-Chinchwad had died on December 28 at Yashwantrao Chavan Hospital.
The state health authority refrained from not labeling as the first omicron death even though the man had a history of travel to Nigeria and a positive Covid diagnosis.
They said he had diabetes for the past 13 years.
“Death is for non-covid reasons.
Accidentally, the National Virology Institute report revealed that he was infected with Omicron variants,” said the authorities.
Health experts in Mumbai said that since the man had tested Covid-positive, deaths likely to be classified as Covid’s death.
“What’s important here is to see how much the role played by the variant causes death,” said Dr Avinash Supe, a member of the Covid death audit panel.
While India reported nearly 1,200 omicron cases, no deaths were reported until now.
Mumbai received the first evide-nce that Omicron got dominance because the latest sequencing reports found a variant in 37.6% samples.
Supplementary City Commissioner Suresh Kakani said about 375 samples sorted by the community, 141 (37.6%) found positive omicron.
“This is an indicator that Omicron increases in the community because the sample belongs to people who do not have a history of travel,” he said.
In the last round of genome sequencing, Omicron was detected in a sample of 2%.
Of the 141 cases, the highest (21) was detected from K-West Ward-Andheri (W), Vile Parle (W) and Juhu.
Eleven cases reported from DD Ward (Tardeo, Giragaum, Walkeshwar, Malabar Hill), and 10 of each of the F-North (Matunga, Sion) and H-West (Bandra, Khar and Santacruz West).
Importantly, the case was reported from 22 of the 24 city wards.
From infected, 93 is fully vaccinated and three has one dose of TAK-ID.
Seven was quite symptomatic, 39 rather symptoms and 95 without symptoms.
“Only seven patients were hospitalized, but they did not have severe symptoms,” said a civilian official.
In all countries, up to 46% of the 450 confirmed omicron cases have no history of international travel.
Of the 198 cases confirmed on Thursday, 30 had traveled internationally.
Three residents of Kalyan-Dombivli in Mantralaya – an employee and two police personnel – found Positive Omicron during weekly testing efforts at the State Secretariat.
(Input: pradeep gupta)