165 infected with UK variant of COVID-19 in India, says government

The Union Health Ministry said on Thursday that the number of people who have tested positive for the UK variant of SARS-CoV-2 in the country has climbed to 165.

All these persons have been kept in single room isolation in designated Health Care facilities by respective state governments. Their close contacts have also been put under quarantine. Comprehensive contact tracing has been initiated for co-travellers, family contacts and others.

"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).

The presence of the new UK variant has already been reported by several countries, including Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, Lebanon and Singapore.

The Government of India took cognizance of the reports of virus reported from the UK and put in place a proactive and preventive strategy to detect and contain the mutant variant. 

The Health Ministry also said that with a consistent rise in cumulative recoveries, India's COVID-19 recovery rate has reached nearly 97 per cent which is one of the highest globally. With 14,301 patients being discharged in a span of 24 hours, the total COVID-19 recoveries have surged to 1,03,73,606.

India's total number of active cases has dropped to 1,73,740 and now consists of just 1.62 per cent of the total cases. Following the national trend of sustained decline in active cases, 31 states and union territories have recorded less than 5,000 active cases, the ministry said.