Around 12 of the 318 people who returned from abroad are missing in the Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation area of Thane, Maharashtra.
Speaking to reporters, KDMC chief Vijay Suryavanshi said, “318 people have recently returned from abroad in Thane’s Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation area. 12 people are missing. A search operation is on to find them.”
“Some of the passengers who returned cannot be reached as their mobile phones are switched off while the addresses given by others are switched off,” he said.
It comes amid growing concerns over the new strain of the coronavirus, Omicron.
The KDMC chief further said that a team from the Health Department will visit the given address again today.
Meanwhile, Maharashtra recorded 669 new coronavirus cases within 24 hours, but no new infection of the Omicron variant was reported, the state health department said.
The state also reported 19 deaths related to COVID-19 and the case fatality rate stood at 2.12 per cent. The number of infected increased to 66,39,995 and the death toll rose to 1,41,194.
The new version of the coronavirus was first reported from South Africa to the World Health Organization (WHO) on 25 November. According to WHO, the first known confirmed B.1.1.1.529 infection was from a sample collected on November 9 this year.
On 26 November, WHO named the new COVID-19 variant B.1.1.529, which has been detected in South Africa as ‘Omicron’. The WHO has classified Omicron as having a ‘type of concern’.
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