Kolkata: 19-yr-old UK flyer and 11-yr-old from Sweden test Covid positive

Kolkata: A 19-year-old boy who arrived from London around 5am on Sunday tested Covid-19 positive, the only one to do so among 227 passengers on the aircraft. The passenger was tested thrice and the result came positive all three times. He was then transferred to an isolation ward in a private hospital. His swab sample has been sent to NIBMG-Kalyani for genome sequencing to check if he has been infected by the Omicron variant. An 11-year-old who arrived in Kolkata from Sweden also tested positive for Covid and has been sent into home isolation under doctors’ supervision.

“Samples have been collected from both for genome sequencing,” said Ajay Chakraborty, director of heath services.

These are the fifth and sixth in Bengal to be tested for Omicron so far. Only one, a seven-year-old boy from Murshidabad, has so far tested positive to the variant.
According to airport officials, the 19-year-old — an Indian — reached Kolkata aboard the Air India flight AI 164 at 4.56am on Sunday. He first underwent a rapid RT-PCR test. After the result came positive, he underwent another rapid RT-PCR test to check if there had been an error. When that result, too, came back positive, the passenger insisted on an RT-PCR test. Six hours later, the result came positive. “At 2.35pm, the boy who had arrived by the flight was put in an ambulance that took him to a hospital in Dhakuria,” an official said.
Since the boy was seated in 36J, all passengers in the row, as well the ones behind and ahead, have been alerted to monitor their health during the seven-day home quarantine, get RT-PCR tests done on the eighth day, and contact state health officials if they get symptoms during that period. If the 19-year-old boy tests positive for the Omicron variant, all the passengers seated close to him will undergo Covid test.

On December 14, a 69-year-old Kolkata resident who had returned from Nigeria had tested positive to Covid at the airport. His swab sample has been stored at the School of Tropical Medicine from where it will be forwarded to NIBMG-Kalyani for genome sequencing on Monday. The patient is now admitted at a private hospital off Bypass and has mild symptoms. Sources said he is on a normal diet and his health parameters are normal.