All international passengers who arrived in India from December 9 to December 22, if found symptomatic and tested positive, will be subjected to genome sequencing in a bid to find if they have the new UK coronavirus strain. "All the international passengers who have arrived in India during last 14 days (from 9th December to 22nd December 2020), if symptomatic and tested positive will be subjected to genome sequencing," it stated. Besides this, ten regional labs have been identified by the Centre where states and Union Territories will send 5% of their Covid-19 positive samples for genome sequencing to detect the new coronavirus variant. The presence of the new UK variant has already been reported by Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, Lebanon and Singapore. All these passengers are being tracked and subjected by states and UTs to RT-PCR tests.

Source: dna December 30, 2020 07:41 UTC