20 People Returned From UK Have Tested Positive For The New Strain, Many Returnees Still Missing
India has recorded 14 more cases with the new UK coronavirus mutant strain, taking the total number of such cases to 20.
Of the 20 cases, eight have been registered at National Centre for Disease Control in Delhi, 7 at National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences in Bangalore, two at Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad.
One each has been logged at National Institute of Biomedical Genomics near Kolkata, National Institute of Virology in Pune and CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in Delhi.
A two-year-old girl in Meerut has also tested positive for the new strain, said Meerut's Chief Medical Officer Akhilesh Mohan.
The parents of the two-year-old though Covid positive, however, have been found to be infected with the mutant. They had all returned from the UK, the health officials in Meerut said. The child is in an isolation ward with her parents at Meerut's Subharti Medical College.
A total of 107 samples have undergone genome sequencing till now. On Tuesday, a total of six UK returnees were found to be positive with the new variant genome, the central government had announced, adding that all these persons have been kept in a single room isolation in designated health care facilities.
While 20 UK returnees have so far found to be carrying the new strain of the virus, there is a fear that the real number could be much higher as across the country, several states have reported that many with recent travel history to the country are untraceable as they have switched off their mobile phones on have given wrong address at arrival.
In Delhi alone, there are around 90 such cases, while 279 are untraceable in Telangana.?
There is a growing fear that the refusal by the UK returnees to get tested and isolated will result in the mutant virus, which is more infectious spreading undetected in the country, which already has the second-highest number of cases of COVID-19 in the world.
Meanwhile, the Indian Government which had banned all flights from and to the UK till December 31 has extended it till January 7.
"Thereafter, strictly regulated resumption will take place for which details will be announced shortly," Hardeep Singh Puri said on Twitter, declaring the week-long extension.?
