Adding to its Omicron tally, Maharashtra, on Friday, reported 8 new cases of the new COVID-19 variant which took the total of such cases in the state to 48, the health department said.
"As per the report given by the National Institute of Virology today, eight more patients were found to be infected with Omicron in the state," an official release said.
Of these, six patients were from Pune, one was from Mumbai, and another from Kalyan-Dombivli (satellite towns near Mumbai), it said. All eight new Omicron patients were male and aged between 29 to 45 years, it added.
Meanwhile, the government of India also said that a total of 101 Omicron positive cases have been detected across 11 states, UTs so far. "World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that Omicron is spreading faster than the Delta variant in South Africa where Delta circulation was low. It's likely Omicron will outpace Delta variant where community transmission occurs, WHO added," Joint Secretary of Health Ministry, Lav Agarwal said.
"New daily cases were recorded below 10,000 for the past 20 days. The case positivity for the last one week was 0.65 per cent. Currently, Kerala contributes 40.31 per cent to the total number of active cases in the country," Agarwal added.
A new variant of COVID-19 was first reported to the World Health Organisation (WHO) from South Africa on November 25. As per the WHO, the first known confirmed B.1.1.529 infection was from a specimen collected on November 9 this year.
On November 26, the WHO named the new COVID-19 variant B.1.1.529, which has been detected in South Africa, as 'Omicron'.
