Chennai: A 47-year-old man traveled to Chennai from Nigeria through Doha on December 10 which was positively tested for Covid-19.
Although asymptomatic, he was accepted at the Covid-19 government hospital at the King Institute campus in Guindy.
Scientists also pay attention to drop s-genes – possible indicators for omicron variants – during the RT-PCR test.
Six relatives and other patient contacts also tested positive infections on Monday.
“Everything is in the hospital and asymptomatic.
There is a drop-s-gene at all.
We have sent samples to sequencing all genomes.
We will be able to mark it as an Omicron variant only if the Instem Lab is Bengaluru confirm,” said Minister of Health MA Subramanian.
If it turns out positive, this will be the first state omicron cluster.
Passengers from Nigeria underwent a random test at the airport after landing.
“The passenger came home.
We took him back to the hospital after the results came.
We also immediately tested his relatives.
Initially, everything was negative.
But soon they developed mild symptoms.
The second RT-PCR test showed that they were all positive,” he said.
The state has tested 11,459 passengers from 11 risky countries and 1,699 passengers who have traveled from other countries in the past week.
Of the 37 passengers have been tested positive for viral infections.
While passengers from risk countries are not allowed to leave the airport until the RT-PCR results confirm that they are negative, passengers from non-risk countries are permitted to go home after their sample is taken for the test.
“While we tested all passengers from countries listed as a risk by the ICMR guidelines, we drew random samples from 2% of passengers traveling from other countries,” he said.
Health officials will now contact other passengers, close contact and crew members, officials said.
So far India has detected 38 cases of Covid-19 with a variant.