Kolkata: A seven-year-old boy and a resident of Murshidabad, who had arrived in Kolkata on December 11 from Abu Dhabi via Hyderabad and had tested positive for Omicron, finally tested negative to Omicron along with some other suspects whose reports were awaited. This has given a sigh of relief to the Health officials as the first Omicron confirmed case has already tested negative.
Director of Health Services Dr Ajay Chakraborty on Thursday said the child had tested negative for Omicron and reports of all the other suspects were also found negative. As per standard norms, the child would be soon released and he would be kept under home quarantine for a week, said Chakraborty.
It was learnt that around 16 people were traced to have contracted the seven-year-old boy.
Health department on Thursday confirmed that all the suspects tested negative for the new variant. Earlier a girl, a UK returnee tested positive for Covid soon after her arrival at Calcutta airport but she tested negative for Omicron.
The person from North 24-parganas, who had tested positive for Covid after returning from Bangladesh also tested negative for Omicron. Samples of all these suspects were sent to the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics in Kalyani for genome sequencing.
"Genome sequencing report of the patient from Bangladesh has been received and no Omicron variant was detected. The variant that has been detected is AY.4 which is a sublineage of the Delta variant," Dr Chakraborty added.
The seven-year-old boy from Farakka in Murshidabad, was asymptomatic and stable despite testing positive for Omicron.
He was kept at the isolation ward of the Malda Medical College. The final testing done on the sample of the patient showed that he was no longer infected with Omicron.
The state Health department has asked all state-run hospitals to be ready for Omicron cases.