A day after the Karnataka government called for a case to be filed against the mysterious RT-PCR reports and hush-hush departure of India’s first Omicron case from the country, both the municipal officials and the police had not acted on the matter.
On Friday, following a meeting held by Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai and senior ministers and health officials, Revenue Minister R Ashoka had said that directions had been issued to the “BBMP commissioner to register a police complaint to investigate how the traveller from South Africa obtained a Covid-19 RT-PCR test report that allowed him to leave the country.”
On Saturday, however, when DH followed up with the matter, it found neither a complaint had been registered by the BBMP nor a case opened at the High Grounds police station.
The 66-year-old pharma executive is said to have obtained a negative RT-PCR test from a testing lab in his native South Africa on November 17, before arriving at the Kempegowda International Airport on November 20, where he promptly tested positive for Covid-19.
However, by the state government’s own internal records, the South African traveller has only two tests registered against his name — both from November 20. “One of the tests was done at the airport, where he tested positive and the second was done at Shangri-La Hotel, where he was a guest,” said a source in the BBMP.
While BBMP Chief Commissioner Gaurav Gupta noted that a show-cause notice had been filed against Shangri-La on Friday for allowing the 66-year-old traveller to leave the hotel, he added that he did not have specific knowledge of a complaint against the lab or the traveller himself.
Another senior officer in the BBMP added that there is little possibility of filing a complaint against the traveller who is already back in his home country. “A show-cause notice has been filed against the hotel because they should have cross-checked his negative certificate with us before allowing him to leave,” added the BBMP’s Chief Health Officer, Dr Balasundar A S.
The traveller’s genomic samples were collected on November 22, and according to the BBMP, even though the patient was still classified as “positive”, he then took a “self-investigation” test at a private lab on the following day (November 23), whereby the RT-PCR test report came back as negative.
The missing third test
While there is no official record of this third test, a government source said that the BBMP had seen “the negative certificate but that it is now trying to verify the veracity of the certificate.”
The BBMP declined to verify if a complaint had been filed against the private lab. Armed with the negative test, the traveller subsequently checked out of the hotel on November 26 to physically visit a unit of his firm at Bommasandra. He subsequently boarded an early morning flight to Dubai the next day.
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