Bhubaneswar: The Omicron tally in Odisha surged to 61 with 24 more persons testing positive for the new variant of COVID-19, Institute of Life Sciences (ILS) Director Ajay Parida informed on Wednesday.
“These cases were detected from 218 samples sent for genome sequencing. Five among them have international travel history while the remaining 19 are local contacts,” he said.
Of the 23 cases detected on January 2, 7 cases were from Keonjhar district, 4 from Khurda, three each from Puri and Sambalpur, 2 each from Boudh and Angul and 1 each from Jagatsinghpur and Balasore.
On December 30, Odisha had reported five Omicron cases taking the tally to 14 within a week. One of them did not have any international travel history.
The state had on December 21 reported the first case of Omicron with two foreign returnees (Nigeria and Qatar) testing positive for the variant.
