Omicron cases in India rise to 21, Delhi and Rajasthan report first cases

India reported 17 more cases of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 on Sunday taking the tally to 21 in the country.

Nine persons in Rajasthan capital Jaipur, seven in Maharashtra's Pune district and a fully vaccinated man who arrived in Delhi from Tanzania have tested positive for the variant.

Most of those who tested positive either recently arrived from African countries or were in contact with such people.

With this, four states and the national capital have now reported cases of the potentially more contagious variant which has sparked a fresh alert across the world.

The nine people who tested positive in Jaipur include four members of a family who returned from South Africa recently.

"Genome sequencing has confirmed that nine persons are infected with the omicron variant," Rajasthan health secretary Vaibhav Galriya said.

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

The total number of confirmed Omicron cases in Maharashtra has gone up to eight now.

In a statement, the state health department 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.

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"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)." Their thirteen contacts had been traced and tested, it said.

The country reported the first two cases of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 on Thursday in Karnataka -- a 66-year-old South African flyer and a 46-year-old Bengaluru doctor with no travel history. Both men are fully vaccinated. On Saturday, a 72-year-old NRI from Gujarat and a 33-year-old man from Maharashtra's Thane tested positive for the new strain.