India's fourth Omicron case detected in Mumbai, 33-year-old came from South Africa

Mumbai: India reported its fourth case of the Omicron coronavirus variant on Saturday from Kalyan Dombivli municipal area near Mumbai.

The infected person had arrived at the Delhi airport from South Africa via Dubai before flying to Mumbai. It is the first such case reported from Maharashtra.

The 33-year-old man had arrived in Delhi on November 23 and had given his samples for COVID-19 testing at the Delhi airport. He had then taken a flight to Mumbai, official sources said in Delhi.

He came with a group of four people. Authorities are tracing and tracking them to do RT-PCR test as well as genome sequencing.

Earlier in the day, a case of Omicron was reported from Gujarat. Two cases with the Omicron variant were already detected in Karnataka on Thursday.

Officials in Gujarat said the patient who tested positive for Omicron was a 72-year old man of Indian origin who had lived in Zimbabwe for decades, and returned on November 28.

India reported 8,603 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday, taking the total to 34.62 million. Deaths rose by 415 to 470,530.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month asked officials to focus on countries identified at risk, after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the new variant to be "of concern".

The WHO said Omicron, initially detected in South Africa, may spread more quickly than other forms of the virus.

India expects the Omicron variant to cause less severe illness, due to rising vaccination rates and high prior exposure to the Delta variant that infected nearly 70% of the population by July.

The federal health ministry said on Thursday that India had identified two male patients, aged 66 and 46, who had the new strain in the southern state of Karnataka.

The first person was a South African national while the second one, an Indian physician, had no recent travel history.