KARACHI: The health department on Friday initiated a door-to-door Covid-19 vaccination drive in Jamshed Town that recently reported a suspected case of Omicron variant, officials told Dawn.

The area, they said, wasn’t under any form of lockdown yet.

“A decision in this regard would be taken once (polymerase chain reaction test) results of the 51 samples obtained from people residing in the neighbourhood of the suspected female patient are received,” said health department’s spokesperson Atif Vighio.

The department in the meantime, he said, was focusing on community counselling on Covid-19 vaccination and compliance to the standard operating procedure (SOPs) as officials found a large number of unvaccinated individuals in the locality.

“We are telling them why it’s important to get vaccinated and ensuring complete adherence to SOPs. There is no involvement of any law enforcement agency right now,” he said.

About the 51 samples being tested for Covid-19, he said the department had collected double samples of each individual to minimise chances of false negative cases.

On Thursday, the health department had confirmed the first suspected case of Omicron variant in the country. The female suspected patient, a resident of Jamshed Town, had been discharged from Aga Khan University Hospital and currently under home isolation along with another family member in her 80s.

Samples collected from the suspected patient and her two male relatives, who are under treatment at the AKUH, have been collected for genome sequencing to confirm infection of Omicron variant. The results will take one to two weeks, officials said.

Health minister Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho in a statement said that the Omicron variant was very transmissible but deaths or serious illness had not been seen in recent reports coming from South Africa, where the variant was first detected.

Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2021