Bangladesh has detected the omicron variant of COVID-19 in three more patients.
This raises the total number of cases of the new variant in the country to seven, reports bdnews24.com.
The first cases of the variant, which has caused concern worldwide, to be officially identified in Bangladesh was detected in two women cricketers returning from a tournament in Zimbabwe.
Germany’s Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data, or GISAID, announced the detection of the three new cases on Tuesday night.
According to the GISAID website, all three are residents of Dhaka’s Banani. Those affected are a 30-year-old woman, a 47-year-old woman and an 84-year-old man.
The government’s Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research collected their samples on Dec 23.
GISAID previously reported identifying another man who had contracted the omicron variant on Tuesday. The genome sequencing that identified the new variant from his sample was carried out at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, or ICDDR,B.
On Monday, GISAID uploaded the genome sequence results of another woman who had the omicron variant of the disease and had her sample taken at the Institute of Developing Science and Health Technology.
Both the man and the woman are Dhaka residents.
ICDDR,B’s Chief Scientific Officer Dr ASM Alamgir told bdnews24.com on Tuesday:
“We carry out genome sequencing of infected people who return from overseas. These fall into that category. We carried out sequencing on their samples after they tested positive for the virus.
So far, Bangladesh has reported over 1.5 million cases and 28,062 fatalities from COVID-19.