At least 11 members of a family in District East of Karachi have been infected with the Omicron variant of coronavirus according to a report in The News on Friday.

Quoting Prof Saeed Quraishy, Vice Chancellor, Dow University of Health Sciences, the News said: “Experts at the Provincial Public Health Laboratory (PPHL) have detected 11 cases of Omicron variant from the samples of a family from Lahore. These samples had been collected by the Sindh Health Department, which sent them to DUHS, where our experts confirmed the presence of Omicron variant through Next Generation Sequencing (NGS).”

Sindh Health Department officials also told The News they had sent the samples of 20 people infected with Covid to DUHS which confirmed that 11 family members were infected with the Omicron variant. They are reported to have been infected after coming in contact with a female relative from Lahore.

“We are now tracing other contacts of these people and will take their samples for analysis but community transmission of this variant has started in the country and we have started seeing a slight surge in the cases of COVID-19 during the last two days,” an official of the Sindh Health Department told The News.

“Community transmission of Omicron has started in Pakistan and it is now replacing the Delta variant very rapidly. As it is several times more transmissible, it would soon replace the Delta and other variants in our population,” Prof. Saeed told the News.

He's not alone in expressing fears of a fifth wave.

While tweeting data on how 30% of the population had been vaccinated, the NCOC on Thursday, urged caution regarding the spread of the Omicron variant.

Earlier the NIHS tweeted its concerns about the spread of the Omicron and urged people to get vaccinated and wear masks.