Agartala, Feb 17 (PTI) Tripura Thursday confirmed the presence of the omicron variant of COVID-19, with 120 people testing positive for the new version of the virus in January.

The omicron cases were detected at the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics Laboratory (NIBGL), Kalyani, in West Bengal, where the northeastern state had sent 231 samples between January 1 and January 30, a health department official said.

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"We had first sent 69 samples to NIBGL for genome sequencing to detect the omicron variant and then 162 more specimens….a total of 120 people were found to have been infected by this variant,” State Surveillance Officer Deep Debbarma said.

West Tripura district reported the highest number of omicron cases at 76 during the period.

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Meanwhile, Tripura logged four fresh COVID-19 cases on Thursday, six less than the previous day, pushing the tally to 1,00,817.

The death toll remained at 916.

The state now has 120 active cases, while 99,713 people have recovered from the disease thus far, he said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)