New Delhi: The new strain of COVID-19 has officially entered in India as samples of 6 UK returnees have been found positive with this Britain variant.
Out of the six samples, three samples were tested at NIMHANS, two in Hyderabad’s centre for Cellular and Molecualr Biology (CCMB) and one in Pune’s NIV. All the six peoples are kept in single room isolation, the ministry of Health said.
“All these persons have been kept in single room isolation in designated Health Care facilities by respective State Governments. Their close contacts have also been put under quarantine. Comprehensive contact tracing has been initiated for co-travelers, family contacts and others. Genome sequencing on other specimens is going on. The situation is under careful watch and regular advice is being provided to the States for enhanced surveillance, containment, testing & dispatch of samples to INSACOG labs” said health ministry.
“From 25th November to 23rd December 2020 midnight, about 33,000 passengers disembarked at various Indian airports from UK. All these passengers are being tracked and subjected by States/UTs to RT-PCR tests. So far only 114 have been found positive. These positive samples have been sent to 10 INSACOG labs (NIBMG Kolkata, ILS Bhubaneswar, NIV Pune, CCS Pune, CCMB Hyderabad, CDFD Hyderabad, InSTEM Bengaluru, NIMHANS Bengaluru, IGIB Delhi, NCDC Delhi) for genome sequencing” it added.
India has reported 16432 new COVID-19 cases and 252 death in the last 24 hours. With this India’s total COVID-19 tally has gone up to 102,24,303 including 268581 active cases and 148153 deaths. On the other hand, a total of 98,07,569 people have recovered so far.