RAWALPINDI: Islamabad has reported the first case of the new COVID-19 strain, Omicron, According to National Institute of Health (NIH) the patient has no international travel history; nonetheless, the patient recently travelled to Karachi.

The patient reportedly is in good health and has only minor symptoms. Contact tracing is currently being done to detect more cases, the NIH added Saturday. It is pertinent to note that six more Omicron cases were reported in Karachi yesterday taking the total number of infections in the city to eight.

According to the reports, the suspected patients have a travel history. Four of them came from South Africa, where the Omicron variation was first detected, while, two others came from the United Kingdom. They said that the suspected patients samples had been sent to a hospital for confirmation and that the patients had been moved to a quarantine centre.