Three UK returnees in Karnataka found infected with new coronavirus variant

Mangalore Today News Network / Yahoo

Bengaluru, Dec 29, 2020:    Three people in Karnataka, who returned from the United Kingdom, have been found to be infected by the new coronavirus variant which is thought to be more infectious. This is as of Tuesday afternoon and more samples are being tested to ascertain if other patients too have been infected with the new UK strain.

 

All the three are residents of Bengaluru, and out of them two are a woman and her child, confirmed Health Minister Dr K Sudhakar. He said the primary and secondary contacts of these patients are being traced and tested.

This comes after the union government earlier on Tuesday morning announced that six people across India, all returnees from the UK, were found to be infected with the new UK strain. The union government said that the genome sequence test to check for the new strain of the virus of the six samples were carried out in NIMHANS (National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences), in Bengaluru, the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad and the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune.

TNM on Monday had reported how the state health department has confirmed that so far that 26 people in Karnataka who have returned from the UK in the past month have tested positive for the virus but it was not established yet if they had tested positive for the variant. As a precautionary measure, all these patients have been kept in government hospitals in the state even if they were asymptomatic.

The Union government had placed restrictions on flights between India and the UK from December 22 as a precautionary measure against the spread of the new variant

However, some of the passengers of these flights have not been tested yet as they have apparently switched off their mobile phones and have remained untraceable, Health Minister Dr K Sudhakar said, adding that the department will take legal action against these people if they don’t cooperate with the government authorities.