Pakistan's first Omicron case detected, unvaccinated Karachi woman falls prey to virus

Pakistan has reported 244 new cases of coronavirus and six deaths in the last 24 hours.

Pakistan's top anti-coronavirus body confirmed on Monday that the country's first Omicron variant has been detected in an unvaccinated woman through gene-sequencing. The confirmation made by the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) came days after a 57-year-old woman in Karachi was suspected of getting infected by the new COVID-19 variant.

"The National Institute of Health, Islamabad has been able to confirm that a recently suspected sample from Karachi is indeed the 'Omicron variant' of Sars-CoV2," the NCOC tweeted.

"This is the first confirmed case but continued surveillance of identified samples is in place to identify trends," it said.