New Delhi: At least 20 passengers from the UK tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday as the government issued a stringent set of SOPs mandating RT-PCR tests at airports for each traveller from the country and isolation in a separate unit of an institutional facility for positive cases in view of the new coronavirus strain.
There is no need to panic but there is cause to be more vigilant, said NITI Aayog member (Health) Dr V K Paul.
"We are yet to spot such a virus in our country We will be safe if we suppress the genomic sequence," Paul said at a press conference while stressing that the mutated SARS-CoV-2 strain detected in the UK has no impact on the potential of emerging vaccines.
Ahead of the December 23-31 suspension of flights to and from the UK that comes into effect at 11:59 pm on Tuesday as India joins about 40 others in sealing off the country, passengers were under close watch and hundreds were tested at various airports.
The process took many hours, resulting in scenes of chaos and confusion at several airports, including Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata.
Of the 20 that tested positive, six were on a flight that landed in Delhi at 11:30pm on Monday, two on a flight that came into Kolkata on Sunday night, four that arrived in Ahmedabad on Tuesday and eight, including a crew member, in Amritsar who also reached today. All were direct Air India flights from London.
"Five passengers were found COVID-positive at the Delhi airport. One passenger who took a connecting flight to Chennai was tested there and found positive," an official in Delhi said.
A second flight from London landed in Delhi at 6am on Tuesday and two more were scheduled for the night. All the passengers were being tested, said Dr Gauri Agarwal, founder of the Genestrings Diagnostic Center handling coronavirus testing at Delhi airport.
The positive samples were sent to the National Centre for Disease Control for research on the new strain using next gen sequencing technology which will help understand the implications on ongoing vaccine efficacy, Agarwal told PTI.
The Health Ministry's guidelines for epidemiological surveillance described the activities to be undertaken at the point of entry and in the community for all flyers who have travelled from or transited through the UK from November 25 to December 23.
It stated that all travellers from the UK will be required to declare their travel history of the past 14 days and fill up a self-declaration form to be screened for COVID-19.
The new SARS-CoV 2 variant is said to be 70 per cent more transmissible, though health experts say there is no evidence that it is more deadly or would react differently to vaccines.
Several researchers have supported the temporary travel bans to and from the UK to stall the spread of the new viral strain.
The strain has also been found in Australia, South Africa, Brazil and Italy. It is absolutely essential to stop the travel to spread this new strain in the world, said Deepak Sehgal, professor and head of department of Life Sciences, Shiv Nadar University.
The new strain was first detected in the UK in September. In November, around a quarter of cases in London were the new variant. This reached nearly two-thirds of the cases in mid-December.
