India has banned all flights from the UK until December 31.
New Delhi:
At least 16 people who arrived in India from the UK in recent days have tested positive for COVID-19 amid the alarm over a mutant strain of the coronavirus believed to be more contagious and first identified in Great Britain. Brittany.
Eight people who came from or through the UK tested positive in Amritsar, five in New Delhi, two in Kolkata and one in Chennai, authorities said. So far there have been no confirmed cases of the mutant strain anywhere in India, the government said.
For the past two days, before the UK flight ban went into effect on Wednesday, all passengers in the country were subjected to RT-PCR tests for the coronavirus and made to wait at airports until they arrived. the results.
Samples of those who tested positive have been sent to specialized laboratories such as the National Institute of Virology in Pune to determine if the infection is from the mutant coronavirus.
Authorities are also tracking all UK travelers in the past four weeks and recommending strict self-monitoring for those who have arrived within the past two weeks.
India has suspended all flights from the UK until December 31, and the country’s financial capital, Mumbai, has announced a nightly curfew for fear of British tension.
Passengers flying into India’s largest airports on Tuesday complained of long waits and confusion as authorities sought to impose rules to try to stop the spread of the new, more transmissible variant of the coronavirus.
India recorded 23,950 new COVID-19 infections in the past 24 hours, bringing the total cases to 1.01 crore, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday. Less than 3 lakh of them are currently infected with the coronavirus, he said.
Daily cases have declined steadily in the country since they peaked in September, although the country still has the second-highest number of infections in the world, after the United States.
A total of 1,46,444 people have died from COVID-19 in the country, and 333 of those deaths occurred in the past 24 hours, the ministry said.
(With inputs from agencies)
.
