Omicron surge in India

New Delhi/ Pune/Jaipur: As many as nine people have tested positive for the Omicron variant of Covid-19 in Rajasthan's Jaipur on Sunday, according to the state health department.

Also, in Maharashtra's Pune district, seven people, including three from Nigeria, were found to be infected with the new variant. Those infected include a 44-year-old woman and her two daughters, aged 18 and 12, who had come to visit her brother on November 24 in Pimpri-Chinchwad from Lagos, Nigeria. The 45-year-old brother and his two-and-a-half-year-old and seven-year-old daughters were also found to be infected with Omicron.

Additionally, a 47-year-old man, who had recently travelled to Finland, also tested positive for the variant in Pune. Four of those found positive have been fully vaccinated, while the other three are minors. With this, Maharashtra's Omicron tally has gone up to eight and India's to 21.

In Rajasthan, nine members of a family in Jaipur tested positive for new variant of Covid-19, days after four of them returned from South Africa, putting the Health department on alert.

Those who returned from South Africa have been admitted to the hospital of the Rajasthan University of Health Sciences (RUHS) and swab samples of all nine people have been sent for genome sequencing to Jaipur's Sawai Man Singh Hospital, a health official said.

Chief Medical and Health Officer Dr Narottam Sharma said 14 samples were taken for testing from the family, nine of which tested positive for the infection. In contact tracing, it was found that four of them had returned from South Africa, he said.

The official said as per guidelines, those who returned from South Africa have been isolated at the RUHS hospital while the other five have been home quarantined.

Besides Maharashtra and Rajasthan, Delhi on Sunday reported its first case of the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus. Earlier, cases were found in Maharashtra's Dombivli, Gujarat's Jamnagar, and two in Karnataka.