New delhi, Dec 29: Six passengers, who returned from the United Kingdom, were found to be positive for the new strain of Coronavirus that was traced in that country earlier this month, according to a statement by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
This has come after the Government of India had banned passenger flight from London and other parts of the UK. A lockdown has been enforced in the UK after it announced that the new strain of Covid-19 went ‘out of control’.
So far, samples of three UK returnees have been tested and found positive for new Covid strain in NIMHANS, Bengaluru, two in Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad and one in National Institute of Virology, Pune.
All six infected persons have been kept in single room isolation, the Union Health Ministry has revealed.
All passengers, who returned from the UK, were screened and tested for Covid at airports across India. The samples of those who tested positive were sent to the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) for the sequence study to find out whether the new variant of Covid has entered into the country or not. The new variant of Covid is reported to be 70 per cent more contagious.
During the Covid pandemic Air India, Vistara, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic have operated flights between London and Indian cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, and Amritsar under an air-bubble agreement between the governments of the two countries.
Meanwhile, India has reported 16,432 new COVID-19 cases, 24,900 recoveries, and 252 deaths in the last 24 hours, according to details provided by the Union Health Ministry on Tuesday. The total Coronavirus cases in the country are 1,02,24,303, with active Covid cases standing at 2,68,581, total recoveries reached 98,07,569, and the Death toll of 1,48,153.
