Mumbai: According to the news agency, Maharashtra’s first instance of the Omicron type of Covid-19, a 33-year-old marine engineer, tested negative for the virus. The unvaccinated man, a resident of the Kalyan-Dombivli municipal district in Mumbai, had flown in from South Africa through Dubai before flying to Mumbai in the latter week of November. According to a civic official, he was released from the hospital on Wednesday and told to stay in quarantine at home for seven days.
The man sought to be vaccinated but was apparently unable to do so since he was working on a private merchant naval ship and had left the nation during the peak of the outbreak in April of this year. At the time, vaccine doses were exclusively available to healthcare and frontline personnel. His swab samples were subsequently forwarded to Maharashtra health officials for genome sequencing, and the test results later showed that he was carrying the Omicron strain. He was admitted to a COVID Care Centre in Kalyan town, where he was discharged at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, according to Dr Vijay Suryavanshi, Commissioner of the Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC). The Commissioner added, “Incidentally, it was his birthday today.” He said, “He was discharged as he tested negative for the infection. As per the standard protocol, his two RT-PCR tests were conducted and both came out negative. He is perfectly all right now and there are no symptoms.” Maharashtra has so far reported 10 cases of the Omicron variant.