New Delhi: The government is alert and there is no need to panic, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Monday amid concerns over the new coronavirus strain in the UK.
He said the government had done everything that was important to handle the COVID-19 situation in the last one year.
Responding to a question on the panic over the new strain and a demand to ban flights from the UK, Vardhan told reporters, "I would say this to all that all these imaginary situations, imaginary talks, imaginary panic... don't involve yourself in this."
"The government is fully conscious about everything. If you ask me, there is no reason to panic the way we are seeing in this press conference," the minister added.
The Union Health Ministry has called an urgent meeting of its Joint Monitoring Group on Monday to discuss the emergence of the new strain in the UK, which has led to a surge in the infection rate there.
Kejriwal asks Centre to ban all flights from UK
Meanwhile, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday demanded that the Centre ban all flights from the UK immediately in view of the emergence ofa mutated variant of the coronavirus.
"New mutation of coron virus has emerged in UK, which is a super-spreader. I urge central govt to ban all flights from UK immediately," Kejriwal tweeted.
A number of European countries have banned flights from the UK as the British government warned that the potent new strain of the virus was "out of control" and imposed a stringent new stay-at-home lockdown from Sunday.
