At least 32 more passengers from the United Kingdom who landed between November 25 and December 21 in India have been found positive for the coronavirus as concerns mounted over new virus strain.
Of those who tested positive, 14 have been reported in Karnataka, eight in Kerala, four in Tamil Nadu, three in Uttar Pradesh, two in Maharashtra, and one in Assam. Their samples have been sent to the National Institute of Virology, Pune for genomic analysis.
In Rajasthan, over 800 British tourists entered the 28 districts of the State in the last one week. Tracking them will be a nightmare. The number of returnees from the United Kingdom, having tested positive, are likely to increase further in the coming days.
The Himachal Pradesh Government has issued an alert for 51 UK returnees to contact the local administration and get themselves tested.
Karnataka Health Minister K Sudhakar on Saturday said 14 people who have come to the State from the United Kingdom so far have tested positive for COVID-19 and their samples have been sent for genetic sequencing to find whether it is a new strain of virus that has infected them. A total of 2,500 people have come (from the United Kingdom), of them 1,638 have been tested.
According to Kerala Health Minister K K Shailaja, eight people who recently returned from the United Kingdom to Kerala have tested positive for coronavirus and their samples have been sent to the National Institute of Virology, Pune for genomic analysis.
Four more people who returned to Tamil Nadu from the United Kingdom have tested positive for COVID-19. Their samples have been sent to the National Institute of Virology, Pune for genomic analysis.
In UP, three members of the same family in Meerut city who returned from the United Kingdom have tested positive for COVID-19. All these three members returned from London on December 14. Health Department officials also fear that the three foreign returnees may be infected by the new variant of the virus that was detected in the United Kingdom.
In the ongoing door-to-door contact drive being conducted by the Delhi government to test UK-returned persons for prevalence of COVID-19, eight have so far been found infected with the coronavirus. A total of 19 passengers out of over 13,000 who landed from the UK at the IGI airport here between November 25 and December 21 have been found positive for the virus.
In Maharashtra a woman, who had returned to Aurangabad in Maharashtra from the United Kingdom in the last few weeks, has tested coronavirus positive. The woman is among the 44 persons who arrived in Aurangabad from the UK after November 25. In another case, One of the over 50 persons, who returned to the Kalyan Dombivli region in Thane district from the United Kingdom in the last one month, has tested COVID- 19 positive.
In the past two weeks, around 102 people have come to Assam from the United Kingdom and one of them was found Covid-19 positive and his sample has been sent to the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune to ascertain whether it is the same new virus strain which hit Europe recently.
The new strain of the coronavirus was first detected in the United Kingdom, last week. As per the experts, this strain is more transmissible than other SARS-CoV-2 variants.