Sixty seven residents, 62 of them fully vaccinated, of an old age home in Maharashtra's Thane have tested positive for coronavirus, said officials amid concerns over a new COVID-19 variant that has set off alarm bells across the world. The area has now been declared a containment zone.
A team of government doctors visited the Matoshree old age home in Sorgaon village in rural Bhiwandi on Saturday and tested 109 inmates after several residents reported symptoms of the virus. It is one of the biggest clusters to be detected in recent months from Thane district.
All of them were admitted to a civil hospital in Thane district.
"After complaints of ill-health by a couple of inmates, a team of doctors had on Saturday tested 109 persons at the Matoshree old age home located at Khadavali," district health officer Dr Manish Renge was quoted saying by news agency PTI.
"Samples of 15 patients have been sent for genome sequencing," said Dr Kailash Pawar, Civil surgeon, Thane Civil Hospital.
Out of 67 - 62 are inmates (all senior citizens) and five are employees of the old age home.
Out of all the patients, 41 are suffering from co-morbidities, the district administration said, adding that 30 of them are asymptomatic.
AdvertisementSorgaon village, which has a population of 1,130, has been declared as a containment zone and other local residents are also being surveyed, it said.
Passengers arriving at Mumbai airport from South Africa, where a new coronavirus variant 'Omicron' has been detected, will be quarantined, the city's mayor said over the weekend. The new strain has been described by the World Health Organization as a "variant of concern". Genome sequencing of passengers, if found positive, will also be done, the mayor said.
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