India has reported six cases of a mutant strain of Covid-19 which was first reported in the United Kingdom. The new mutant strain is 70% more transmissible.
The Union Health Ministry said, “Three patients were in Bengaluru’s NIMHANS, two in Hyderabad’s Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology and the other in Pune’s National Institute of Virology. All six patients are in isolation.”
The health ministry added, “Their close contacts have also been put under quarantine. Comprehensive contact tracing has been initiated for co-travellers, family contacts and others. Genome sequencing on other specimens is going on.”
Around 33,000 passengers arrived in India from the UK over the past month. Of those, 114 were found to be positive for coronavirus. The government has sent their samples to ten labs for genome sequencing.
The variant has so far been detected in Denmark, Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, Lebanon and Singapore.
Most of the countries across the world have banned flights from the United Kingdom and South Africa. India too has done the same. The Civil Aviation Ministry had suspended all flights between that UK and India from December 23 to December 31. Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Tuesday said he foresees a slight extension of temporary suspension of passenger flights between India and the UK due to the detection of the new strain.
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