India's 1st Omicron Patient Left The Country On A Forged RT-PCR Certificate, Four Arrested

Two senior executives of a South African pharma company and two other junior employees of a lab have been arrested in connection with issuing a fake COVID certificate. This helped the first South African Omicron patient leave India in November, as per ABP Live.

The man tested COVID positive and had been quarantined in a star hotel in Vasanthnagar.

But on November 20, just 4 days after reaching India, he produced a negative COVID certificate and left for South Africa on November 27.

Reuters

As per Deccan Herald, his genome sequencing results came back on December 2, finding him positive for Omicron.

Then a probe was initiated and it was discovered that the report was 'fake'. Then these 4 were arrested.

The two people booked from Adcock Ingram Ltd were Vice president of quality control Yogeshwar Mohan Persad Dokie and Manager of Quality Control Ravindranath. The other 2 who were nabbed from Syngene Lab were Executive Custodian Manoj Kumar and Registration Executive Prashanth of the lab.

Reuters

As per the experts, vaccination is the key measure to adopt at this stage. Even if the existing vaccines are expected to be less effective against the Omicron variant, they are likely to provide significant protection.

Status of Omicron?

Two doses of a Covid vaccine are not enough to stop you from catching the Omicron variant, UK scientists have warned. Early analysis of UK Omicron and Delta cases showed the vaccines were less effective at stopping the new variant. But a third booster prevents around 75% of people from getting any Covid symptoms.

BioNTech and Pfizer said that a three-shot course of their COVID-19 vaccine was able to neutralise the new Omicron variant in a laboratory test, an early signal that booster shots could be key to protection against infection from the newly identified variant. The German and U.S. companies said two doses of their vaccine resulted in significantly lower neutralising antibodies but could still be protective against severe disease.

The World Health Organization classified Omicron on November 26 as a "variant of concern" but said there was no evidence to support the need for new vaccines specifically designed to tackle the variant and its mutations. Nevertheless, the companies said they would continue efforts to bring an Omicron-specific COVID-19 vaccine to market. Work started on November 25.

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