PANAJI
Four of the five crew members, who tested positive for Covid, have tested negative for the omicron variant while the sample of the fifth member has been forwarded again to the National Center for Cell Science, Pune for retesting.
The samples of the three Russian and two Georgian crew members from a shipping vessel that entered Goan territory were previously sent to the Pune lab for genome sequencing.
“Four out of five initial samples sent for genomic sequencing are negative for the omicron variant. One sample has been put for retesting,” the Health Minister confirmed.
Meanwhile, the Directorate of Health Services is still awaiting the test reports of samples from three passengers from flight AI 146 which arrived from the UK on December 10 with 237 passengers. These three passengers had tested positive for Covid. These three passengers and four asymptomatic positive crew members were isolated at PHC Cansaulim. The fifth crew member, who was symptomatic, was also isolated at PHC Cansaulim after he was taken off oxygen. All high-risk contacts of these foreign nationals have been identified and placed on 14 days home quarantine with retesting advised on the eighth day. The Directorate of Health Services had succeeded in identifying 84 such high-risk contacts.
Presently, Goa is testing all travellers from high-risk countries at the Goa International Airport and only two per cent of the passengers from flights that arrive from non-high-risk countries.
Goa recorded 44 new Covid cases on Saturday raising the active count to 436. The state’s daily positivity rate stood at 1.4 per cent with 3,131 samples tested.
No deaths related to Covid were recorded on Saturday.
Over the last two weeks, the Directorate of Health Services has recorded 580 new cases. The number of active Covid cases under Urban Health Center, Panaji has shot up from 13 to 49 while UHC Margao has witnessed a rise from 21 to 73.
The number of fully vaccinated persons in Goa has touched 10.61 lakh and the number of partially vaccinated stands at 2.09 lakh.
