Nine cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 have been recorded in Rajasthan's capital city Jaipur, State Health Department told news agency ANI on Sunday, 5 December.
Among the nine people, four had returned from South Africa recently, news agency PTI reported.
Their samples were reportedly forwarded to Jaipur’s government Sawai Man Singh Hospital for genome sequencing.
Earlier, seven more people had tested positive in Maharashtra, which took the state's total tally to eight, the State Public Health Department said on Sunday.
A family of six, including a 44-year-old woman, and a 47-year-old man from Pune had tested positive. While the 44-year-old woman had mild symptoms, the other five family members had no symptoms at all. The state health department also asked people not to panic.
Delhi also detected its first case of the variant at the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Hospital (LNJP), where a man who had arrived in the national capital from Tanzania was admitted.
With nine new cases in Rajasthan, eight cases of the variant in Maharashtra, two in Gujarat and one each in Gujarat and Delhi, India's tally currently stands at 21.
After the experience of brutal COVID-19 waves still fresh in several corners of the world, 'Omicron,' which has been declared as a Variant of Concern by the World Health Organization (WHO), has led to global alarm.
In India, the first two cases of Omicron were detected in Karnataka on 2 December.
According to the WHO, it is not yet clear whether Omicron is more transmissible or severe compared to the Delta variant.
(With inputs from ANI and PTI.)
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