With new cases of Covid's Omicron variant being reported in Delhi and Rajasthan, the total count of cases of the new strain in India has climbed to 45 on Tuesday.
Earlier, a 42-year-old man from Gujarat who recently returned from South Africa tested positive for the new variant, reported NDTV.com.
Currently, the man is under treatment in home isolation and all the relatives as well as his four co-passengers have tested negative for Covid.
Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain said four more cases of the new COVID-19 variant, Omicron, have been detected in the national capital and all have travel history to foreign countries.
The Omicron variant of the coronavirus has not spread in the community so far and the situation is under control, he added.
"So far, six people have been found Omicron positive in the capital. One of them has been discharged. All of them had travelled to foreign countries and were transferred to the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan (LNJP) hospital from the (Indira Gandhi International) airport," Jain told reporters.
The condition of the remaining five Omicron-positive patients is stable, he said.
So far, 74 travellers have been sent from the airport to the hospital, where a special ward has been set up for isolating and treating suspected cases of Omicron. Thirty-six of them have been discharged and 38 are admitted to the hospital.
Jain said the government is fully prepared to tackle the spread of any variant of the coronavirus.
Delhi's first patient of the Omicron variant -- a 37-year-old man from Ranchi -- was discharged from the LNJP hospital on Monday after he tested negative for COVID-19 twice, officials said. The man had travelled from Tanzania to Doha and from there, to Delhi on a Qatar Airways flight on December 2. He stayed in Johannesburg in South Africa for a week and had mild symptoms.
Under new norms, RT-PCR tests are mandatory for the passengers arriving from the "at-risk" countries and they are allowed to leave the airport only after the results come.
Also, two per cent of the passengers arriving on flights from other countries are being tested randomly.
Yesterday, Maharashtra also reported two new cases of Omicron variant, with both the patients having Dubai travel history.
Omicron, a new Covid variant said to be "highly transmissible", has now been reported in six states- Maharashtra (20), Rajasthan (9), Karnataka (3), Gujarat (4), Kerala (1) and Andhra Pradesh (1) and two union territories- Delhi (6) and Chandigarh (1), according to ndtv.com.
Notably, India logged 5,784 new coronavirus infections, the lowest in 571 days, while the active cases declined to 88,993, the lowest in 563 days, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Tuesday.
With the fresh cases, India's total tally of Covid cases climbed to 3,47,03,644.
The death toll due to the viral disease has shot up to 4,75,888 with 252 more fatalities, according to the ministry's data updated at 8 am.
The number of active coronavirus cases in the country has declined to 88,993, accounting for 0.26 per cent of the total caseload and the lowest since March 2020, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate was recorded at 98.37 per cent, the highest since March 2020, the ministry said.
