Harish Rao says all international passengers will be tested

Health authorities on Thursday said no new cases of the Omicron variant of the Coronavirus were found in the state from among the international air travellers who arrived in the city in the past few days.

As of Thursday, the total number of Omicron cases found in the state stood at 38, the same as on Wednesday.

Of these, 31 were people who flew into the city from not at-risk countries, six from at-risk countries and one is an instance of local transmission, from an international arrival to a doctor from the city.

Health minister T. Harish Rao said that the state government was ramping up testing at the Shamshabad airport to include all international arrivals. He also said, “We have been asking the Centre to allow booster doses for those at high risk, the frontline health workers, the aged, and those with comorbidities but there has been no positive response. We will ask them again.”

The state health department said six persons from among 648 international arrivals from at-risk countries tested positive for Covid-19 and were shifted to the Telangana Institute of Medical Sciences (TIMS), to be placed under observation



and treatment until results of genome sequencing on their samples become available. If they test positive for Omicron, then they will be placed in a special ward at TIMS, officials said.

In all, genome sequencing results on samples collected from 10 people, including four on Wednesday, were awaited, officials said.

Meanwhile, a Sudanese national’s status as a student admitted to a college in Vikrampuri of Secunderabad area gave some anxious moments to the health authorities as they scrambled to check if the young man from south Sudan had visited the college before his admission to TIMS’ Omicron ward. However, the officials later breathed a sigh of relief after learning that the Sudanese student did not do so.

Meanwhile, Gandhi Hospital has begun testing Covid-19 samples for identifying Omicron variant with arrival of the necessary reagents. Hospital superintendent Dr K. Raja Rao said that the 48 samples that were sequenced came from different parts of the state. All the 48 tests, conducted in the Bio Safety Level 2 lab at the hospital, were negative for the Omicron variant, he said.