Double jab only passport to entry

City tracks down all ten primary contacts of Omicron patients

By Y. Maheswara Reddy | NT

Bengaluru: As India detected the fourth case of Omicron – a 33 year old from Maharashtra who had travelled to Mumbai from South Africa via Mumbai and Delhi – the IT capital’s civic authorities went into overdrive to track down the last of the ten people Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) who had arrived with the first man who tested positive for the Covid-19 variant.

BBMP officials told News Trail that they had tracked down all the ten people who had arrived from South Africa on November 20 including the last of the ten, who they homed in on, on Saturday.

The ten had been initially untraceable after civic authorities detected two cases of Omicron infection in the city.

BBMP Special Commissioner (Health and IT) Dr KV Trilok Chandra told News Trial “We have traced some of the passengers on Friday night and on Saturday the rest were traced. We have now traced all 10 people who arrived from South Africa a few days ago.

“All of them have been subjected to RT-PCR testing on Saturday and we are awaiting their test results. Only those who will test positive, their samples will be sent for genome sequencing. They arrived in Bengaluru in the first and second week of November, before Omicron was identified. They are not the contacts of the two persons who were detected with the new variant.”

I t may be recalled that tracing these 10 people became a headache for health officials after two cases of Omicron infection were reported in the city. According to a health department official these missing travellers were spread across Jayanagar, BTM Layout and Mahadevapura in Bengaluru.

It said the tracing of 10 missing people was done by the City Corporation authorities with the assistance of a police team of the respective jurisdiction of the 10 travellers.

The police have traced the location of the missing people through the tower location. It is said the police have visited the residences of the missing people based on the address provided in the passports and other documents. The police have advised the family members of those travellers who switched off mobile phones that criminal cases would be registered against them thus forcing the authorities to impound their passports.

Meanwhile, the BBMP health department officials have closed 6th Cross Road in RBI Layout, JP Nagar for the public after one of the residents was infected with the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus. The BBMP authorities have barricaded the road as a precautionary measure to avoid spreading virus to others.

With two confirmed cases of the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus, the government has made two doses of vaccination mandatory for parents of children aged below 18 years who are going to schools and colleges.