The Maharashtra government on Wednesday announced that all those people who have returned to the state from the United Kingdom during the past one month would be examined medically to detect if they had symptoms of the new strain of Covid-19 virus.
Talking to media persons here, Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope said that the state government would conduct a special survey of incoming passengers who arrived from the UK by flights at the international airports in Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur, between November 25 and December 23.
“We have already received a list of the passengers who landed in Mumbai from the UK from the airport health authorities. We have sent the names of passengers to all districts and municipal corporations for further action,” Tope said.
Tope said that the officials concerned in district and civic bodies would check the passengers who had arrived in Maharashtra since November 25 for symptoms and subject them to the RT-PCR Covid tests on them.
He said that the samples of those detected positive or infected, would be sent to the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune, for genetic testing and ascertaining if it matched the new Covid-19 virus strain detected in the UK.