Omicron in Maharashtra: State adds 2 more cases on Monday to take total tally to 10

Mumbai, Dec 6: Two fresh cases of Omicron variant of Coronavirus have been reported in Maharashtra on Monday.

A 37-year-old South Africa returnee man and his 36-year-old US returnee friend have been infected with the new variant of Covid-19. Thus taking the total number of the cases to 10 in Maharashtra, the state government said.

On Saturday, the state detected its first case of Omicron variant as a man from Kalyan Dombivli municipal area near Mumbai who had arrived from South Africa tested positive.

A day later, the number of cases of Omicron variant of COVID-19 rose to eight in Maharashtra as seven more persons from Pune tested positive.

The new cases in Maharashtra include a woman and her two daughters who came from Nigeria, her brother, and a man who returned from Finland in the last week of November, officials said.

"The 44-year-old, woman, who is a Nigerian citizen of Indian origin, her daughters aged 18 and 12, arrived on November 24 from Lagos in Nigeria to meet her brother in Pimpri Chinchwad area," the state health department said on Sunday,

It added, "The woman, her two daughters, her 45-year-old brother and his two daughters aged 7 and one-and-a-half years, have tested positive for the Omicron variant as per the report given by the Pune-based National Institute of Virology (NIV)."

With this, five states (Karnataka, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Delhi and Rajasthan) has now reported cases of the potentially more contagious variant which has sparked a fresh alert across the world.