When the cases in India have slowed down, samples of six persons who returned from the UK to India have tested positive for the new mutant strain, which is believed to have a 70% higher transmission rate that led to a surge in the cases in Britain. As per reports, three of them have been sent to NIMHANS, Bengaluru, while two of them have been accommodated in Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology, Hyderabad and one person is in National Institute of Virology, Pune. All six passengers have been placed under ‘single room isolation’. Meanwhile, the India government has initiated a full-fledged contact tracing programme to identify all those people who have come in contact with the six UK returnees.
“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,” the India government in a statement said, adding that the National Centre for Disease Control would lead the Indian SARS-CoV2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) Labs in identifying the new COVID variant through genomic sequencing. Also, India temporarily banned flights to and from the United Kingdom.
