After Karnataka, Gujarat reports its first and India`s third case of Omicron variant

A 72-year-old man who returned from Zimbabwe has tested positive for Omicron variant of COVID-19 in Gujarat.

New Delhi: Gujarat has detected its first case of Omicron variant of COVID-19. The state health department on Saturday (December 4) said that a Jamnagar man who returned from Zimbabwe was found infected with Omicron, as per PTI.

The sample of the 72-year-old man was sent for genome sequencing, after he tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday, the health department added. 

Gujarat's Commissioner of Health Jai Prakash Shivhare confirmed that the man was found infected with the Omicron strain, the news agency reported. 

Earlier, Karnataka logged India's first two cases of the new COVID-19 variant Omicron, Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Union Health Ministry said on Thursday.

Of the two cases found infected with Omicron, one was a 66-year-old South African man who came to Bengaluru on November 20 and left India after testing negative. The other patient is a 46-year-old man who is a doctor - an anaesthetist - at a hospital in Bengaluru. He tested positive on November 22 and has no travel history to South Africa or any other country, the civic body officials said. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) has labelled the new strain, first detected in South Africa, as a "variant of concern" and assigned the B.1.1.529 variant the Greek letter Omicron.

(With agency inputs)