MUMBAI: A total of 11 of the roughly 2,200 passengers who returned to Mumbai from the UK since Nov. 25 have tested positive for the coronavirus, civic body officials said on Monday.
Of these 11 passengers, five had arrived last week, while the other six had returned by Dec. 22, said Dr. Managala Gomare, executive health officer for Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).
Another official said that samples of these 11 passengers were sent to the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune for genome sequencing and determining if they are infected with a new strain of the coronavirus.
“Currently 187 of the 590 passengers who returned from the UK last week are in institutional quarantine at various hotels,” said Dr Gomare.
He said the state government gave the civic body two lists of more than 2,000 passengers, who arrived from England between November 25 and December 22.
He said all of them have yet to be contacted.
“Our teams are trying to track all of them. In the meantime, six of them who arrived in Mumbai before December 22 have tested positive for coronavirus,” said Dr. Gomare.
In light of the emergence of a new variant of the coronavirus in the UK, the Mumbai civic body on Sunday issued revised guidelines to ensure mandatory 14-day quarantine for all passengers arriving from the UK, Europe and the Middle East.
In accordance with the amended Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), travelers will be kept in institutional quarantine after arrival and the RT-PCR test will be performed on the seventh day from arrival at the respective hotels, institutional facilities on their own shore.
“If the test report is negative, the passenger would be discharged from institutional quarantine after seven days with the notice of seven days of mandatory home quarantine. A total of 14 days of quarantine must be guaranteed,” said the Corporation Brihanmumbai Municipal (BMC) had said.
In accordance with the guidelines, a quarantine stamp will be affixed to the home and an undertaking will be made from travelers that they will comply to be quarantined at home.
If the test result is positive, the passenger will be transferred to the designated Covid-19 hospital as Seven Hills for the United Kingdom and the GT hospital for travelers from other countries for further evaluation and treatment, the civic body said.
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