By The SUN
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| The latest Omicron patient was stuck at HK airport for at least 2 weeks because of visa issues |
Hong Kong reported
today, Dec 1, its fourth imported Omicron case, involving a 38-year-old man
from Nigeria who spent days stuck at the airport in the city.
The patient was not
included among the three imported cases reported by the Centre for Health
Protection today.
CHP said the patient had
not received any Covid-19 vaccination and was asymptomatic.
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Investigations
revealed the man had previously travelled from Papua New Guinea to Nigeria on Nov
15, before he traveled to Qatar and Hong Kong.
After his arrival in
Hong Kong on Nov 24, he remained in the airside of the restricted area of the airport due
to a visa-related issue.
He tested positive in
a pre-departure test on Nov 27 in the restricted area, but was found to carry the highly-feared Omicron variant only on Dec. 1.
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Places he had been to
in Terminal 1 of the airport have been put under a compulsory testing notice.
The report came as
Nigeria confirmed finding the Omicron variant in samples it collected as early
as October, suggesting the cases there had pre-dated those in southern Africa, which
were first reported to the World Health Organization on Nov 24.
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| A room at Ramada North Point, where the 3rd Omicron patient had stayed |
Earlier, Hong Kong found Omicron in another traveler from Nigeria who arrived on Nov 24 via
Ethiopia and Thailand. The 37-year-old man tested positive during his
quarantine at Ramada Hotel in North Point.
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The two earlier
Omicron cases involved a 36-year-old man from South Africa who was found to
have passed on the variant to a 62-year-old man from Canada who had stayed in
an opposite room at Regal Airport Hotel in Chek Lap Kok.
They arrived in Hong Kong on November 10 and 11, respectively, but were reported to have carried the previously unknown Omicron variant only on Nov 25.
Meanwhile, a Filipina
domestic worker, a young girl from Pakistan and an elderly woman from Spain
were reported today as having tested positive for Covid-19 in Hong Kong.
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The 31-year-old
Filipina who arrived from Manila on Nov 25 via 5J272 tested positive on her
fifth day at Penny’s Bay Quarantine Centre.
The five-year-old girl
who had originally come from Pakistan was also at PBQC where she was tested
after being identified as a close contact of a previously identified Covid-19
patient. She came on Nov 21 via EK384 from United Arab Emirates.
The third patient is a
61-year-old woman from Spain who flew via Qatar on QR818 on Nov 29. She tested
positive on her arrival test at HK airport.
The two older women both carried the L452R mutant strain while the girl’s viral load was insufficient for testing.
