PESHAWAR: The federal capital Islamabad has reported the first case the high contagious variant of Coronavirus, Omicron, on Saturday.
Deputy Commissioner Islamabad Hamza Shafqat said, “First case of Omicron variant detected in Islamabad. The patient has travel history from Karachi. We are tracing all his contacts now. Everyone please get vaccinated and follow SoPs”. According to the officials of National Institute of Health, the patient has no foreign travel history however; he has recently returned from Karachi. The health officials said that the patient’s condition is out of danger.
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District Health Officer Zaeem Zia, on the other hand, said in a twitter post, “Omicron has high transmissibility, twice as Delta. Its doubling rate of the cases way higher than delta. Omicron has double chances of reinfections as compared to delta virus.” Dr Zia asked the public to take more serious and get vaccinated. The National Institute of Health (NIH) had confirmed the Omicron case in Pakistan after analyzing the samples obtained from the suspected patient on 8 December in Karachi. The patient in has been diagnosed with a new variant of coronavirus, Omicron, by genome sequencing.
The second case of South African variant of Coronavirus, Omicron, was also deducted in Karachi. According to Health Department sources, a 35-year-old man, who had returned from UK, tested positive for the virus after conducting his genome sequencing. The government had imposed travel ban on Category-C countries because of spike in Omicron variant but the UK does not fall into that category.
According to doctors, strict measures must be taken to prevent the spread of the Omicron virus, as this variant is likely to spread more rapidly. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the first cases of Omicron were reported in South Africa and Hong Kong and have been described as a “high risk” virus because of its high prevalence. The health experts have urged for booster dose to contain the spread of the virus.