The patient in Hanoi came from Britain while the patient in Indonesia has no travel history
Indonesia on Tuesday announced its first locally transmitted Omicron case in Jakarta while Vietnam detected its first Omicron case in a quarantine facility in Hanoi.
“This patient is a male aged 37, with no history of overseas travel in the last few months, nor any contact with international visitors,” the Ministry of Health’s Covid-19 vaccination spokesperson Siti Nadia Tarmizi told an online press conference.
From Medan city in the North Sumatra province, the patient arrived in Jakarta on 6 December, and on the same day he and his wife visited a mall in the Sudirman Central Business District in the capital city.
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The patient in the Hanoi quarantine facility had arrived from Britain on 19 December and tested Covid-19 positive. The genome sequencing results which arrived on 21 December confirmed that he had the Omicron variant. The Hanoi government has made it compulsory that anyone arriving from countries which have detected Omicron variant must be quarantined irrespective of the vaccination or recovery status.
For the Indonesian patient, an antigen test before flying back to Medan revealed he had Covid-19 and on 26 December, genome sequencing results confirmed he had Omicron while his wife tested negative for the virus.
Authorities are currently tracing the patient’s close contacts and conducting swab tests for people who visited the mall and the hospital, as well as an apartment in North Jakarta where the patient lives. With this new patient, the total Omicron cases stand at 47, including 45 international travellers and a worker at a quarantine centre.
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