BENGALURU: Five more people tested positive for the Omicron variant of SARS CoV2 in Karnataka, taking the state’s tally for the new variant to 19. In one of the cases, an 11-year-old girl tested positive for Covid, but her primary contacts are positive for Omicron.
She got herself tested as the school demanded an RT-PCR test before allowing her to attend classes offline. Karnataka Health Minister Dr K Sudhakar on Monday morning tweeted, “There are five cases of Omicron confirmed in Karnataka. A 54-year-old male from Dharwad, 20-year-old female from Bhadravathi, an 82-year-old male and a 73-year-old female from Udupi, and a 19-year old female from Mangaluru.”
Dakshina Kannada, which reported five Omicron cases on Saturday, saw another 19-year-old student from a cluster at a nursing college testing positive for the variant, taking the tally in the coastal district to six. She tested positive for Covid on December 12, after which her samples were sent for genome sequencing. She is the second girl from her college to test positive for Omicron. She was fully vaccinated in July and is asymptomatic. Her vitals are stable.
Elderly couple test +ve for Omicron
In Udupi, the samples of two elderly people, an 82-year-old man and his 73-year-old wife, tested positive for Omicron after their 11-year-old granddaughter underwent an RT-PCR test to attend offline classes at a school in Bengaluru. The girl tested positive for Covid on November 26.
Later, among four primary contacts in her family, three tested positive for Covid, including her grandparents. Udupi Deputy Commissioner Kurma Rao said, “The elderly couple got fully vaccinated in May, and the 73-year-old woman is a cancer patient and is under medication.
She is doing well.” As the girl and her family stay in an apartment, the samples of all the 2,700 residents and nearby houses were tested. Only five tested positive for Covid. Dharwad reported its first Omicron case in a 54-year old man with no travel history. He tested positive for Covid on December 5.
He is healthy, has no symptoms and is under home isolation, officials said. His four primary and 133 secondary contacts have tested negative. In Bhadravathi, a 20-yearold woman was confirmed Omicron-positive.
She is among 25 other nursing students who tested positive for the highly infectious virus. DHO Dr Rajesh Suragihalli said she tested positive after returning from Kerala. The woman doesn’t have any travel history. She was under isolation since December 2. Nearly 700 students were tested and of them, 26 tested positive for Covid-19.