India's Omicron count crosses 150

New Delhi/Mumbai: India's Omicron Covid count rose to 153 on Sunday after Maharashtra reported six and Gujarat logged four more cases of the new variant of coronavirus, respectively.

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 five-year-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 45-year-old NRI and a teenage boy who came from the UK, a Surat-based woman who had recently visited Dubai and a Tanzanian national are the new patients of the Omicron variant.

The 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.

"The man's sample was later found infected with the Omicron variant," Anand district health officer Dr M T Chhari said.

He was scheduled to reach the state's Anand city from Ahmedabad.