guwahati altogether 47 omicron cases were confirmed in assam on monday after the north east institute of science and technology handed over the confirmatory reports of the suspected cases following whole genome sequencingbesides travellers from saudi arabia and the us the new variant has been found in a crpf camp in dhemaji and in a community search in jorhat a source associated with the testing process told toi health officials in assam said omicron has spread out far beyond guwahati which was evident in the latest reportstill sunday nine omicroninfected patients were detected in the state of which three were international travellers the rest were assam residents some of whom came in contact with covidpositive foreign travellers two had interstate travel historywith mondays confirmation a total of 56 omicron cases have been detected in the state of the 47 newly confirmed cases 21 are international travellers but majority have stayed within the state or had interstate travel historytravellers mostly from the us saudi arabia and kuwait are in the list of omicronpositive cases whose reports have been confirmed on monday but spread of omicron in the community has been confirmed after several people were tested positive for omicron in jorhat many of them were staying within jorhat district only an insider in the state health department saidthe first omicron case of assam was detected in neighbouring meghalaya where a 13yearold boy had tested positive to the new variant of covid he did not have any travel history outside indiawhole genome sequencing which is needed to be done in sophisticated laboratories is a must to confirm the presence of omicron however in the icmrrmrc lahowal in dibrugarh total 309 omicron cases were detected till recently the kits used in the tests at icmrrmrc were recently developed by a team of scientists from icmrrmrc which can detect the omicron variant in just two hours the state health department has not yet recognized the investigation into the new kit of icmrrmrc which it considers as a partial test process to detect omicronwhole genome sequencing is a costly affair the actual number of omicron cases would have been much higher than 56 had there been genome sequencing of more samples a senior health department official said