While Many Recent UK Returnees Remain Untraceable, 7 In Telangana Test Positive For COVID-19
A day after it was reported that a coronavirus positive woman who had returned from UK managed to give authorities a slip in New Delhi and reached Andhra Pradesh by train, more COVID-19 cases have emerged among recent returnees.
Seven people who had returned to Telangana from the UK have tested positive for COVID-19.
Their samples have been sent to the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) to find out if they had been infected with the new strain of coronavirus.
The health department is also trying to trace those who came in contact with these seven persons.
The Health Minister reviewed the situation in the wake of the concern caused by a new strain of coronavirus found in the UK.
Officials said that 1,200 people reached Telangana either directly from the UK or travelled through the UK since December 9. The health department identified 846 people and conducted tests on them. Seven of them have tested positive. They said those who tested negative are also being monitored.
The development comes even as several states are struggling to identify people with recent UK travel history.
Despite an appeal to get themselves tested and report to health authorities many have reportedly gone into hiding.
In UP it is being reported that many have switched off their mobile phones, making it difficult for authorities to trace them.?
The Ghaziabad administration has established a dedicated wing inside the integrated COVID-19 control room to treat people who have returned from the UK and Europe.
In Maharashtra, the Pune district administration is still in the process of tracing some 504 passengers who returned from the UK in the last 28 days.
In Odisha, around 60 people have been?identified who returned to the state from the UK in the past fortnight. The government has asked the authorities to undertake intense surveillance, contact tracing, RT-PCR test and genome sequencing of all incoming passengers.
The Goa government had on Thursday said that the testing of 979 people, who had arrived in the state from the UK after December 9, was going on.
Eleven passengers among those who arrived in Goa from the UK have tested positive for COVID-19 so far, state Health Minister Vishwajit Rane said.
Samples of these patients have been sent to the National Institute of Virology in Pune for further testing.
India has suspended flight to and from the UK in the wake of the new strain of COVID-19 virus there.?
