Seven more persons, including a three-year-old child, have tested positive for the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in Maharashtra on Friday, pushing India's tally of the new strain to 32, official sources said.

Of the seven new Omicron cases detected in Maharashtra, three were from Mumbai while four were from Pimpari Chinchwad. The three patients in Mumbai who were infected with the new strain have a travel history to Tanzania, UK and South Africa. With these news cases, Maharashtra has so far reported 17 Omicron cases. 

A total of nine new COVID-19 cases of the Omicron variant - seven from Maharashtra and two from Gujarat, were reported in the country on Friday. 

Earlier, the wife and brother-in-law of an NRI man, who tested positive for the Omicron variant in Gujarat a week back, were also found infected with the new variant of COVID-19, officials of the Jamnagar Municipal Corporation (JMC) said. With these two new cases, three COVID-19 cases of Omicron variant have been reported in Gujarat.

The 72-year-old NRI man who arrived from Zimbabwe, along with his wife, was found infected with the Omicron variant on December 4. His wife and his brother-in-law, who lives in Jamnagar, tested positive for COVID-19 on December 4.

The JMC said in a statement that the genome sequencing of swab samples has established that both the COVID-19 patients were also infected with the Omicron variant.

Of the 32 Omicron cases reported in India, nine are in Rajasthan, three in Gujarat, 17 in Maharashtra, two in Karnataka, and one in Delhi. 

Meanwhile, India's total COVID-19 confirmed caseload on Friday surged to 3,46,74,744 with the addition of 8,503 new COVID-19 cases, while the death toll reached 4,74,735 with the report of 624 more deaths, according to latest update by the Union Health Ministry.