KARACHI
Agha Khan University Hospital (AKUH) on Monday confirmed the presence of the Omicron variant in an unvaccinated Covid-19 patient, days after detection of a suspected case of Omicron virus in Karachi.
In a statement, the hospital said the patient was isolated at home and doing well. The statement added that so far only one case of the variant has been detected in the country.
The Omicron case was also confirmed by the National Institue of Health in the federal capital. NIMS said this is the “first confirmed case but continued surveillance of identified samples is in place to identify trends’’. The NCOC urged people to vaccinate for protection against the serious effects of existing and new variants.
On Thursday, Pakistan detected its first ‘suspected’ case of the Omicron variant in Karachi. “The genome sequencing has not been done as of now, but we suspect it to be the Omicron variant due to the manner in which the virus is behaving,” the Sindh health minister had stated. “The Omicron variant spreads quickly, but recent reports from South Africa suggest that the variant does not cause serious illness or a high number of deaths,” the minister had said at the time.
Last week, the National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC) had announced travel restrictions in the wake of the Omicron variant of coronavirus, adding eight more countries, mostly European, in Category C, banning in-bound passengers.
With the latest expansion, the number of countries in Category C increased from seven to 15. The list comprises The Netherlands, Hungary, Ireland, Croatia, Ukraine, Slovenia, Vietnam, Poland, South Africa, Mozambique, Lesotho, Eswatini, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia. TLTP
