The Centre on Friday said four more cases of the highly contagious mutant variant of Coronavirus were detected in the country, taking the total tally of such cases to 29 so far.
Out of the four new cases, three were detected in Bengaluru and one was from Hyderabad, the union health ministry said. So far, 10 cases have been detected by labs in Delhi, 10 by a Bengaluru lab, one in West Bengal, three in Hyderabad and five by the National Institute of Virology, Pune.
The British Government had recently announced that the newly identified strain of the virus found in their population is up to 70 per cent more transmissible.
The presence of the new UK variant has already been reported by Denmark, Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, Lebanon and Singapore.
Pursuant to announcement by British Government, Indian government had taken cognisance of the reports of mutant variant and put in place a pro-active and preventive strategy to detect and contain the mutant variant.
It included temporary suspension of all flights coming from UK with effect from the midnight of December 23 till 31. It was later extended to January 7. The coronavirus-induced suspension of scheduled international passenger flights other than air bubble ones has been extended till January 31.
From November 25 to December 23 midnight, about 33,000 passengers disembarked at various Indian airports from the UK. All these passengers are being tracked and subjected by states and UTs to RT-PCR tests.
Read all the Latest News, Breaking News and Coronavirus News here
Comments
0 comment