Five more persons in Bengal tested positive for the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus on Tuesday and four of them have no foreign travel history.
Bengal’s Omicron tally has touched 11.
“We received genome sequencing reports of samples of 107 persons on Tuesday night. Five of them were positive for the Omicron variant,” said Ajay Chakraborty, the Bengal government’s director of health services.
“One of them was a foreign traveller and four were detected positive among the local samples.”
An official said local samples meant samples of Covid positive people who have not travelled abroad recently.
Of the four without any foreign travel history, two persons are from Kolkata and one each from Howrah and Dum Dum.
Chakraborty said all Omicron patients had mild symptoms or were asymptomatic.
The count of active Omicron cases stands at 10. Active cases are those who are yet to recover or spend the mandatory isolation period.
The state health department is trying to find out whether those who do not have any foreign travel history had come in contact with someone who had arrived from abroad.
The department recently asked all laboratories to send swab samples of all Covid positive persons for genome sequencing if the samples have a CT value of less than 30.
The samples of all people testing positive on arrival from abroad are also being sent for sequencing. The CT value is a measure of the viral load in a patient. The lower the value, the higher the load.
Health services director Chakraborty said the health department was sending samples for genome sequencing on Mondays and Thursdays.
