At least 1,000 travellers had landed in Mumbai in the last 15 days from African countries where the Omicron variant of coronavirus was detected, a senior official said on Monday. He said the Mumbai civic body collected swab samples of at least 100 travellers out of the 466 whose list was received so far. Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's Additional Municipal Commissioner Suresh Kakani told PTI that the airport authority has informed that around 1,000 travellers had landed in Mumbai from African countries in the last fortnight, but it has handed over a list of only 466 such passengers so far.

"Out of the 466 travellers, 100 are from Mumbai. We have already collected their swab samples. By tomorrow or a day after tomorrow, their reports are expected. It will be clear if they are positive or negative to coronavirus," Kakani said. The World Health Organisation (WHO) had last week classified the Omicron as a 'variant of concern'. "There won't be an issue if their test report is negative, but the civic body is going to conduct genome sequencing of positive samples, along with S-gene missing test that is advised by the WHO for faster detection of infection due to Omicron, without genome sequencing," he said.