India’s Omicron count crosses 150 after Maha’s 6 new cases

A few states have been reporting surge in COVID cases amid fear of the new variant

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: India’s Omicron COVID count rose to 153 on Sunday after Maharashtra reported six more cases while a 45-year-old NRI and a teenage boy, who recently arrived in Gujarat from the United Kingdom, also tested positive for the variant. Two more cases were reported from Gujarat.

According to central and state officials, Omicron cases have been detected in 11 states and union territories -- Maharashtra (54), Delhi (22), Rajasthan (17) and Karnataka (14), Telangana (20), Gujarat (11), Kerala (11), Andhra Pradesh (1), Chandigarh (1), Tamil Nadu (1) and West Bengal (1).

Six persons tested positive for the Omicron variant of coronavirus in Maharashtra on Sunday, raising the state’s tally of such cases to 54, the health department said. While two of these patients had a history of travel to Tanzania, two others had returned from England and one from the Middle East. All five of them are fully vaccinated. Another patient is a fiveyear-old boy from Junnar in Pune who is a close contact of Dubai travellers from Junnar, it said in a statement.

“Total six cases were diagnosed today - four of them found during the airport screening in Mumbai. One of these four patients is from Mumbai, two from Karnataka and one from Aurangabad,” it said. Out of 54 cases in the state, 22 have been found in Mumbai.

In Gujarat, a non-resident Indian tested positive for the coronavirus infection in the RT-PCR test carried out at the Ahmedabad international airport soon after he arrived from the UK on December 15, a health department official said on Sunday. A 15-year-old boy from Gandhinagar was also detected with the Omicron variant after returning from the UK, Gandhinagar Municipal Commissioner Dhaval Patel said.

Delhi records 107 new COVID cases, 1 death

The national capital on Sunday recorded 107 fresh COVID-19 cases, the highest since June 27, and one death as the positivity rate stood at 0.17 per cent, according to data shared by the city health department. On June 27, Delhi had logged 259 coronavirus cases with four deaths, according to the government data. The city logged 86 new cases on Saturday and 69 on Friday. The rise in daily cases comes amid the Omicron scare in Delhi as the total number of patients infected with the latest variant of the coronavirus jumped by 12 on Friday to reach 22.