Maharashtra’s first Omicron patient has tested negative, got discharged from the hospital

According to news agency PTI, Maharashtra’s first patient of the Omicron type of Covid-19, a 33-year-old marine engineer, has tested negative for the virus. The unvaccinated guy, 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.

The Maharashtra health authorities had then sent his swab samples for genome sequencing and the test report later confirmed that he was carrying the Omicron strain.

He had been admitted to a COVID Care Centre in Kalyan town, from where he was discharged at 6 pm on Wednesday, Commissioner of the Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC) Dr Vijay Suryavanshi told reporters. “Incidentally, it was his birthday today,” the Commissioner added.

“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,” he said

Maharashtra has so far reported 10 cases of the Omicron variant.

Maharashtra has issued strict guidelines for international travelers, particularly from “at-risk” countries. State Minister Aaditya Thackeray has also urged the Centre to allow booster shots, reduce the vaccine gap and bring down the cut-off age for inoculations to 15.

The state government has said that Mumbai has covered 100 per cent of those eligible with the first vaccine shot and more than 73 per cent have received the second.Amid the virus scare, 109 out of 295 recent foreign returnees to the township in the Thane district of the state were reported untraceable on Tuesday. Mr Suryavanshi had said the mobile phones of some of these people were switched off while many of the last given addresses were found to be locked.