The first case of Covid-19 variant Omicron was detected in Chhattisgarh’s Bilaspur district on Wednesday.
Officials in the Health Department said after finding a patient from Bilaspur Covid positive, his swab sample was sent to Bhubaneswar from where his test report after genome sequencing was found Omicron (“Omicron” — B.1.1529) Positive.
The 52-year-old from recently returned from the United Arab Emirates.
India detected its first Omicron case on December 2 in Karnataka. Till now, the country has logged more than 2,000 cases of this virus. Before it was reported in India, Omicron cases were found in 29 countries.
The new variant of Covid-19 was first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) from South Africa on November 25.
As per the WHO, the first known confirmed B.1.1.529 infection was from a specimen collected on November 9. On November 26, the WHO named the new variant B.1.1.529, detected in South Africa, as ‘Omicron’.
