New UK virus reached India, six flyers found to be positive with it: Health Ministry

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has confirmed that six travellers who have come from the UK have been found to be positive with the new variant.

They have been kept in isolation and the government is tracing their contracts vigorously so that it couldn’t spread in the community.

As of now, the new virus has been identified among the travellers only.

The Ministry has issued a press release in this regard and said that from November 25 to December 23, 2020 midnight, about 33,000 passengers arrived from the UK at various international airports in the country.

The health agencies involved in Covid-19 management tracked all these passengers and subjected them to RT-PCR tests with the help of the state government.

Out of 33,000 passengers, only 114 have been found positive with the Sars-Cov-2 virus.

“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,” the Ministry said.

It added, “A total of 6 samples of 6 UK returnee persons have been found to be positive with the new U.K variant genome. 3 in NIMHANS, Bengaluru, 2 in CCMB, Hyderabad, and 1 in NIV, Pune.”

The state governments have kept all these people in single rooms in isolation. Besides, the close contacts of all these people have 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,” the Ministry said.