New Delhi:
The Health Ministry called a meeting for tomorrow with its joint monitoring group on COVID-19 to discuss a mutant coronavirus that has spread rapidly in the UK, the sources said. Several European nations have banned flights to and from Britain.
Britain warned that this new strain of coronavirus was “out of control” and imposed a new strict stay-at-home lockdown from Sunday.
The joint monitoring group chaired by the Director General for Health Services (DGHS) will meet tomorrow around 10am to discuss the mutated variant of coronavirus reported from the UK, the sources said.
The India representative from the World Health Organization, Roderico H Ofrin, who is also a member of the monitoring group, is likely to participate in the meeting.
The Netherlands imposed a ban on flights from the UK and Belgium said it would do the same. Germany was also considering a similar measure as “a serious option” for flights from Britain and South Africa, where another variant was discovered, the AFP news agency reported.
India has not made any political decisions on any flight bans from the UK, sources told NDTV.
Italy will join the ban to protect its citizens, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio wrote on Facebook, without specifying when the measures would take effect. Austria’s Health Ministry told the APA news agency that it would also impose a flight ban, the details of which are still being worked out.
British Health Secretary Matt Hancock warned on Sunday that stringent measures affecting nearly a third of England’s population could be maintained until the virus vaccine is fully implemented. “We acted very quickly and decisively,” Hancock told Sky News, justifying the “stay home” order, a ban on family gatherings during Christmas and the closure of non-essential stores. “Unfortunately, the new strain was out of control. We have to control it.”
The coronavirus mutation worries scientists around the world, as pharmaceutical companies are still in the early stages of launching vaccines.
Scientists first discovered the new variant, which they believe is 70 percent more transmissible, in a patient in September. And Public Health England, a government agency, raised the alarm on Friday when modeling revealed all the seriousness of the new strain.
Britain’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty noted that while the new strain was much more infectious, “there is no current evidence to suggest that (it) causes a higher death rate or affects vaccines and treatments, although work is being done urgently to confirm it. ” “, Reported AFP.
India today added 26,624 coronavirus infections in 24 hours, bringing its count to 1,00,31,223, according to data from the Health Ministry. The number of recent infections is 5.8 percent higher than Saturday, when the country recorded 25,152 cases to bring total infections to more than one crore.
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