Elderly man from Jamnagar who returned from Zimbabwe tests Covid positive

Amid global concern over the highly contagious Omicron variant of coronavirus, a 72-year-old man has tested coronavirus positive in Jamnagar city of Gujarat following his return from Zimbabwe, an African nation and one of the "at risk" countries identified by the authorities, officials said on Thursday.

In order to ascertain if he is infected with the Omicron variant, the health authorities have sent his samples to Ahmedabad for genome sequencing, Jamnagar municipal commissioner Vijaykumar Kharadi said, adding that it will take around one week for the result to come.

"The man is a native of Jamnagar and has been living in Zimbabwe for the last many years. He arrived here on November 28 to meet his father-in-law. After he got a fever, his doctor advised him to get an RT-PCR test done. As mandated, the private laboratory informed us today that his report has come out positive for COVID-19," the civic chief said.

"He has been shifted to the isolation ward at the Guru Gobind Singh Government Hospital. We have started contact tracing as per protocols and his samples were sent to Ahmedabad for genome sequencing to know if he is infected with the new variant," Kharadi added.

Two people have tested positive for Omicron variant of coronavirus in Karnataka. The new strain has been marked as Variant of concern by the World Health Organization (WHO).