A total of six people who returned to India from the UK have tested positive for the new strain of coronavirus discovered there, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) said in a statement on Tuesday. Of these, the ministry said, three samples tested positive in Bengaluru, two in Hyderabad and one in Pune.
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“A total of six samples from six returnees from the UK have been found to be positive for the new UK genome variant. 3 at the National Institute of Health and Mental Sciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, 2 at the Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad and 1 at the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune ”, said the ministry statement Tuesday morning The statement further said that those who tested positive have been kept in single room isolation in health care facilities designated by the respective state governments, adding that their close contacts have also been quarantined.
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Noting that the situation is under careful surveillance, the statement also said states are being advised regularly to improve surveillance, containment, testing, and sending samples to 10 laboratories of the Sars-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium. from India (INSACOG), including the three where the six samples tested positive for the new coronavirus strain.
Of the six who tested positive for the new genome variant, one is from Tamil Nadu, said state health secretary J Radhakrishnan. Of the two samples that tested positive at CCMB Hyderabad, one is from Warangal (Telangana) and Nellore (Andhra Pradesh).
On December 21, the Union’s civil aviation ministry announced a temporary ban on flights from the UK, from 11:59 pm on December 22 to December 31. The ministry had also mandated that passengers arriving in India from any international flight from the UK must undergo “mandatory” RT-PCR testing and has also issued detailed standard operating procedures in this regard.
The new strain of coronavirus, which is reported to be 70% more contagious than the current one, has prompted several countries to ban flights from the UK. It was discovered in the country in September. The presence of this new variant has already been reported by Denmark, Holland, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, Lebanon and Singapore, so far.
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