A two-year-old girl who recently returned to Meerut with her parents from the UK has been found to be infected with the new Covid-19 strain. With this, the number of UK returnees found carrying the new variant of SARS-CoV-2 has increased from 6 on Tuesday to 14 on Wednesday out of 107 positive Covid cases.
As a preventive measure, the Centre has dashed off a missive to States asking them to curb crowding in the wake of New Year celebration and keep a strict vigil on all events that could be a potential super spreader.
Of the 20 new UK coronavirus mutant strain, 8 have been registered at the 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 the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics near Kolkata, National Institute of Virology in Pune and CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in Delhi. Of the total 107 cases, eight are from the national Capital.
The new variant is considered to be more lethal than the original coronavirus and is more transmissible among young people.
Keeping in view the fresh surge of coronavirus cases in Europe and America, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhsuhan said in the letter to the States and UTs that there was still a need for maintaining comprehensive precaution and strict surveillance within India.
“You will appreciate that in the wake of New Year and various celebratory events associated with it as well as the ongoing winter season, a strict vigil is required to be maintained to curb all potential ‘super spreader’ events and places where crowds may gather,” Bhushan said in the letter.
A senior official with the Union Health Ministry said the two-year-old girl in Meerut and her parents, who have also tested positive for the new strain, had returned from the UK. The child is in an isolation ward with her parents at Meerut’s Subharti Medical College.
All the patients have been kept in single room isolation in designated health care facilities. These were the first cases to be reported by the country that has the second-highest number of cases after the US.
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.
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.
Meanwhile, the Ministry said daily recoveries have outnumbered the daily new cases since the last 33 days successively. In the last 24 hours, 20,549 persons were found to be Covid positive in the country. During the same period, 26,572 new recoveries were registered.
India’s cumulative recoveries stand at 98,34,141 on Wednesday, the highest globally. The recovery rate has also reached nearly 96 per cent. The gap between recoveries and active cases is consistently widening (95,71,869), said the Ministry.