India Reports 9 More Fresh Cases Of New Strain Of Coronavirus, Total 82 Cases have Been Detected So Far

 The Union Ministry Of Health and Family Welfare announced on Friday that a total of 82 persons have been detected positive with the new strain of Covid-19.

A total of 82 persons found with new mutant variant of SARS- CoV-2 virus so far: Ministry of Health and Family Welfare pic.twitter.com/MZsMS5TaVy

— ANI (@ANI) January 8, 2021

 On January 6, the Ministry had said that the tally for the new variant of coronavirus has reached 73 in India.

All the people who have tested positive for the new variant of the virus were kept in single room isolation at designated healthcare facilities by the respective state governments, the ministry had earlier said.

Their close contacts have also been put under quarantine. A comprehensive contact tracing exercise has been initiated for their co-travellers, family members and others. Genome sequencing on other specimens is going on, the ministry said.

The Union Health Ministry further stated that the situation is under careful watch and regular advice was being provided to the states for enhanced surveillance, containment, testing and dispatch of samples to labs.

The flights between India and UK were suspended from December 23 to January 7 in the wake of a more infectious Covid-19 strain in UK.

Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri  had said on Saturday flights from India to UK will resume from January 6. The first flight from the UK will arrive India on January 8. the Civil Aviation Ministry has revised the number of flights allowed to operate between India and UK and brought down to 30, from 70 till January 23. A detailed instruction has also been issued by the Union Health Ministry for passengers arriving in India from UK.

According to standard operating procedures (SOPs) issued by the Health Ministry, all passengers coming from UK between January 8 to January 30 would be subjected to self-paid Covid-19 tests on arrival.

All those arriving from the UK, who test positive will be isolated in an isolation facility. Negative ones will be taken to a quarantine facility for 7 days followed by 7 days home quarantine: Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/EyTnkNMvNA

— ANI (@ANI) January 8, 2021

Moreover, each passenger arriving from UK would have to bring his or her Covid-19 negative report from a test done 72 hours prior to the journey, it said.

On December 29, a total of six UK returnees were found positive with the new strain of Covid-19. These were the first cases reported in India.

From November 25 to December 23 midnight about 33,000 passengers disembarked at various Indian airports from UK. All these passengers are being tracked and subjected by States and UTs to RT-PCR tests.

Notably, 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 daily new cases of Covid-19 in India dropped to 19,000 for the fifth time in January, taking India's total cases to 1,04,13,417, the recoveries have increased to 1,00,37,398.

18,139 new cases were reported in the past 24 hours across the country, while the death toll in the country is at 1,50,570 .