New Delhi: Eight passengers were found to be Covid-19 positive upon arrival from Britain on Monday night flights in different cities in India. These passengers had arrived on different flights from London to Delhi (5), Kolkata (2) and Chennai (1), and have been sent to institutional quarantine. Central health agencies are closely monitoring their health and their samples have been collected to sequence the genome to see if they are infected with the new mutated virus detected in the UK. Several states have quarantined all those with a recent travel history to the UK and have collected their swabs for testing.
India has stepped up surveillance of its airports in light of the rapidly spreading new mutated strain of Sars-CoV-2 (novel coronavirus) detected in the UK. The Center also issued a Standard Operating Procedure for Epidemiological Surveillance and Response on Tuesday in the context of a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus detected in the UK.
The new SOPs say that all positive inbound passenger cases should be submitted for genome sequencing, and if the sequencing report is consistent with the current genome of the SARS-CoV-2 virus circulating in the country, the protocol ongoing treatment, including home isolation. , treatment can be followed at the facility level depending on the severity of the case.
However, if genomic sequencing indicates the presence of a new SARS-CoV-2 variant, the patient will remain in a separate isolation unit. “Although the necessary treatment will be administered according to the existing protocol, the patient will be examined on day 14, after having tested positive in the initial test. If the sample tests positive on day 14, more samples can be taken until their two consecutive samples taken 24 hours apart are negative, ”said the SOP.
Niti Aayog (health) member VK Paul said on Tuesday that although the mutation found in the UK is an “adverse development” as it improves the transmissibility or spread of the Covid virus by 70 percent and acts as a super spreader, the mutated virus does not pose an immediate threat in terms of affecting the severity of the disease or increasing the deaths of Covid patients.
He added that there was no need to panic as the mutated virus had not yet been traced in India. He said the government had taken the samples from all the UK passengers who tested positive and sent them for genome sequencing. “There is no reason to panic, although there are reasons for us to be more vigilant. The government is monitoring it closely, but the mutation of the virus will have no impact on the potential of vaccines, ”Paul said, adding that 17 mutations have been found in Sars-CoV-2 so far.
India for the first time had fewer than 20,000 new Covid cases (19,556), the lowest in 173 days, as total cases rose to 1,00,75,116. The Health Ministry said for the first time that India’s number of active cases fell below three lakh and was the lowest in 163 days. The union’s health secretary, Rajesh Bhushan, said the deaths among the Covid-19 patients were largely due to delays in hospitalization.
On Monday, WHO chief scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan told NDTV that the mutated strain may already be present in other nations such as Italy, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands and South Africa. “The UK is one of those countries that is doing a lot of whole genome sequencing and is therefore able to track this very closely in real time. I suspect that as more countries examine their data, they might find that this variant, or a related variant, could already be there, “said Dr. Swaminathan.
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