India has registered five new cases of the new mutant UK COVID-19 strain. This has taken the total tally to 25 in the country. Out of the five fresh cases, four have been traced by the National Institute of Virology in Pune. One to CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in Delhi. The infected individuals have been kept in physical isolation at state health facilities.
The Health Ministry said in a release on Thursday, “The consortium of 10 government labs, ie, INSACOG, has so far found a total of 25 cases of mutant UK virus after genome sequencing. Four new cases were found by NIV, Pune, and one new case was sequenced in IGIB, Delhi. All 25 persons are in physical isolation in health facilities.”
India had detected 14 new cases on Wednesday. Eight of them have been detected at the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) in Delhi. Four at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences Hospital (NIMHANS) in Bengaluru. One at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) in Delhi. One at the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBG) in West Bengal’s Kalyani.
On Tuesday, six people — three from Karnataka and one each from Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh — who returned from the UK were found to be carrying the new variant.
Those detected with the mutant strain are being kept in single-room isolation in designated health care facilities by states. Those who have been in close contact with positive cases are also quarantined.
The new mutant variant of the UK COVID-19 virus spreads rapidly.
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