The number of individuals who tested positive in the country for the UK form of SARS-CoV-2 has risen to 165, the Union Health Ministry said on Thursday.
Many of these individuals were held in single-room isolation by the respective state governments in designated health care facilities.
Their close contacts were placed under quarantine as well. For co-travellers, family contacts and others, extensive contact tracing has been started.
“The total number of cases infected with the new strain of the novel coronavirus first reported in the UK now stands at 165,” the ministry said.
Of the total 165 cases, the mutated UK strain was detected in the samples of 42 people at National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) in New Delhi and 51 in the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) in Delhi, five in the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, 44 in the National Institute of Virology in Pune, eight in the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad, 14 in National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences Hospital (NIMHANS) Bengaluru and one in the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG), Kalyani (near Kolkata).
Several countries, including Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, Lebanon and Singapore, have already announced the existence of the latest UK version.
The Government of India took cognizance of the virus reports reported from the United Kingdom and put in place a proactive and preventive plan to recognise the mutant variant and to contain it.
