Covid-19: Pakistan confirms first case of Omicron variant

Pakistan has confirmed its first case of the Omicron Covid-19 variant, in the country's most populous city of Karachi, the country's National Institute of Health (NIH) said on Monday.

"The NIH has been able to confirm ... that a recently suspected sample from Karachi is indeed the 'Omicron variant'," the NIH said in a Tweet. "This is the first confirmed case but continued surveillance of suspected samples is in place to identify the trends."

Authorities in the South Asian nation had begun investigating a first suspected case of the Omicron variant of coronavirus last week, a health ministry official told Reuters on Thursday.

After a provincial official in southern Sindh province initially said the variant had been identified in a private hospital patient, the NIH had then said they were still carrying out sequencing to confirm the case was that of Omicron.

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