A pedestrian walks past a wall mural featuring illustrations of frontline workers urging citizens to wear masks properly in order to raise awareness about COVID-19 safety protocols in Mumbai, India on January 9, 2022. India reported 159,632 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday. Photo: AFP

What's in a name? For Indian travel start-up founder Kovid Kapoor, it has made him a social media sensation.

The 31-year-old's Twitter profile declares: "My name is Kovid and I am not a virus."

He posted this week that he had traveled outside India for the first time since the onset of the pandemic "and got a bunch of people amused by my name." "Future foreign trips are going to be fun!" he said in a tweet that had been liked 40,000 times and received 4,000 retweets by Friday.

The comment triggered a barrage of jokes, memes, messages and interview requests, in a moment of light relief as the highly contagious Omicron variant sees case numbers surge in India.

Kapoor has joined in himself, declaring that he was been "Kovid positive since 1990" and posting a picture holding a bottle of Corona beer.

"I am Kovid that wants more travel," the co-founder of Holidify quipped.