Bangladesh finds first Omicron in two female cricketers

Bangladesh desk: Two players of the Bangladesh women’s cricket team, who had tested positive for Covid-19 while under institutional quarantine upon their return from Zimbabwe, were the first two confirmed cases of the Omicron variant in Bangladesh.

One of the cricketers is 21 years old while the other is 30.

“It has been confirmed that they have been infected with Omicron variant. Everyone who came into contact with them have been tested, but none of them tested Covid-19 positive,” Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) Director General (DG) Prof ABM Khurshid Alam said on Saturday.

Talking to reporters following a function at Dhaka Shishu Hospital, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said both the cricketers are now in institutional quarantine. They are suffering from fever, but their condition is stable now.

The minister echoed the DGHS DG in saying that no other members of the cricket team squad or anyone else who had come into contact with the two cricketers had been infected.

According to the DGHS, the team returned from Zimbabwe on December 1, and they have been kept in institutional quarantine at a hotel in Dhaka since then. The cricketers underwent Covid-19 tests on December 6, and samples from the two Covid-19 positive cricketers were sent to laboratories for genome sequencing to determine if they contained the Omicron variant.

South Africa alerted the world to Omicron late last month, prompting alarm that the highly mutated variant could trigger a new surge in global infections.

On November 26, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Omicron as a variant of concern, the fifth SARS-CoV-2 strain to carry such a designation.