PremiumFour more people have tested positive for the new and highly infectious strain of coronavirus infection, taking the total number of cases to 29 in the country, said Union health Ministry on Friday.
The updated tally includes 25 people who were found positive for the new virus strain during the last three days.
Of the total cases of new mutant coronavirus strain, 10 are from the national capital.
"All the 29 persons are in physical isolation in health facilities," an official said.
Of the 29, the mutated UK strain was detected in the samples of eight persons at the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) in New Delhi, two in the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), Delhi, one in the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG), Kalyani (near Kolkata), five in the National Institute of Virology in Pune, three in Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad and 10 were sequenced at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences Hospital (NIMHANS) Bengaluru.
Comprehensive contact tracing has been initiated for co-travellers, family contacts and others, the ministry said.
The presence of the new Covid-19 variant, which was first identified in the UK, has already been reported by Denmark, Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, Lebanon and Singapore.
Earlier, the UK health official announced that the country has identified a new variant of Coronavirus that spreads faster than the other strains.
More than 40 countries including India have banned travel to and from the UK, a move several researchers said was necessary in the view of the rapid spread of the new strain, which was first detected on September 21.
Meanwhile, India on Friday reported 20,036 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of cases to 1,02,86,710, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW).
As many as 23,181 recoveries and 256 deaths have been recorded in the last 24 hours, as per the Union Health Ministry.
The tally of active cases stands at 2,54,254 while the total recoveries have reached 98,83,461.
A total of 1,48,994 people have succumbed to coronavirus in the country, according to MoHFW.
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