Omicron threat: Five more travellers from 'at risk' countries test COVID-19 positive in Mumbai, 9 so far

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New Delhi: As Omicron variant grips the world in fear, five more people who arrived in Maharashtra's Mumbai from 'at risk countries' tested positive for COVID-19, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said on Thursday (December 2). 

As per the civil body, all the five travellers who tested positive for COVID are males and had arrived in Mumbai between November 17 to December 2. Three of them had come from London, one from Portugal and one from Germany.

BMC’s additional municipal commissioner Suresh Kakani said that a total of nine travellers who arrived in Mumbai have tested positive for COVID-19 so far and are suspected to have Omicron variant, PTI reported. 

All the infected travellers have been admitted to the civic-run Seven Hills Hospital, while their samples have been sent for genome sequencing, the BMC official said.

"Contract tracing of these travellers is going on," the official added. The samples of a total of 485 travellers have been collected so far, he further said. 

According to the Centre, the "at-risk" list includes countries in Europe, including the United Kingdom, South Africa, Brazil, Botswana, China, Mauritius, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Singapore, Hong Kong and Israel.

Meanwhile, the Maharashtra government on Thursday tweaked its travel restrictions and made seven-day institutional quarantine mandatory for passengers from only three countries - South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe. 

While the domestic air travellers will either have to be fully vaccinated or carry a negative RT-PCR test certificate not older than 72 hours before boarding. 

Earlier today, Karnataka logged India's first two cases of the new "variant of concern" Omicron, Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Union Health Ministry said. "Two cases of the variant have been reported in the country so far. Both cases are from Karnataka," Agarwal stated. 

(With agency inputs)