New Delhi: The tally of people, suspected of carrying the new Covid strain detected in the UK, in the national capital rose to 38 on Wednesday after three more people, including returnees from the UK and a contact, were found Covid-19 infected during a surveillance drive conducted by the Delhi government, officials said.
Two of them have recently returned from the UK while one is a contact. All three of them have been isolated at the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash (LNJP) Hospital, its medical director Dr Suresh Kumar told IANS.
Out of the 38 at the hospital, 17 are passengers who returned from the UK recently while remaining are their contacts.
Meanwhile, four Covid patients at the Delhi government-run hospital have been found infected with the new variant first detected in the UK.
“All the patients found infected with the new variant have been isolated separately in different rooms of a special ward designated for the patients suspected or found infected with the new variant,” Kumar said.
IANS had reported earlier in the day that the AAP government has quarantined around 200 people, who either returned from the UK within a month or are in contact with those travellers found positive, at two facilities.
More than 80 of them have been quarantined at a hotel in Aerocity while the rest are kept in a banquet hall turned quarantine facility situated near Chattarpur.
The Delhi government has designated 2,000-bed LNJP as the nodal centre for isolation of persons who are suspected to have the new variant of the Covid-19.
As per information from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, a total nine samples of the UK returnees have been found to be infected by the new variant in Delhi laboratories. The NCDC has detected eight samples while the IGIB has found one infected with the new strain.
The Union Health Ministry informed earlier in the day that the total number of people testing positive for the new UK variant genome of Sars-CoV-2 virus has reached 20, based on the results of genome sequencing of positive samples released by the Indian Sars-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) labs.
The samples have so far been sequenced in seven of the 10 designated labs across the country — seven samples tested positive in NIMHANS, Bengaluru; two in CCMB, Hyderabad; one in NIV, Pune; eight in NCDC, Delhi; one in IGIB, Delhi and one in NIBG, Kalyani (West Bengal).
(IANS)
