Probe on Covid negative result obtained by Omicron infected who left country

Bengaluru: The Karnataka government directed the Bengaluru city civic administrative body to register a police complaint and investigate the validity of Covid negative test result produced by the South African traveller, one of the two Omicron infected in India, The Indian Express reported. After a meeting with the state's chief minister, senior ministers, and health officials, state Revenue Minister R Ashok informed on Friday that the government directed the civic body Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike to register the complaint.

The 66-year-old South African traveller left India within seven days of testing positive after getting a negative certificate from a private lab.

He had arrived in Bengaluru on November 20, tested positive at the airport, and stayed at a hotel in central Bengaluru. On November 23, he obtained a covid negative certificate report from a private lab with which he returned to South Africa on November 27 via Dubai.

The Karnataka government had reported on Thursday that the Omicron variant had infected two South African travellers, and this person, a representative of a private medical firm, was one of them.

Minister Ashok said that the situation was mishandled, and the government wanted to find whether the lab had reported the findings of the test correctly.

However, 24 primary contacts and 240 secondary contacts of the South African were tested negative. Five contacts of the second Omicron case, a 46-year-old doctor who travelled from South Africa, have tested positive for Covid, and their samples were sent for genome sequencing.