Kolkata: Five persons, who returned to West Bengal from foreign countries recently, were found to be infected with the omicron variant of COVID-19, an official said on Thursday.
With this, the state's omicron tally rose to 16, he said.
Samples of six people diagnosed with COVID-19 were sent for genome sequencing as all of them returned from foreign countries. Of them, five people were found to be omicron-positive, the official said.
Among the new omicron patients is a five-year-old girl who returned from the UK, he said.