The health ministry on Saturday said that the total number of cases of the mutant strain of Covid-19 in India, first found in the United Kingdom, has gone up to 90.
As per reports, eight of these cases of the mutant Covid-19 strain, believed to be more infectious, are new, the data showed.
This came a day after India resumed flights from Britain. An Air India flight from Britain, carrying 256 passengers, landed in New Delhi on Friday.
"The total number of cases infected with the new strain of the novel coronavirus, first reported in the UK, now stands at 90," the ministry announced.
Around 18,222 new Covid cases in a span of 24 hours took the overall tally to 1,04,31,639 on Saturday. The country also reported 228 deaths, pushing the total number of deaths linked to the infection to 1,50,798.
The active caseload, however, is 2,24,190 and over 1 crore people have already recovered from the killer virus.
The number of such SARS-Cov-2 cases of the new UK virus stood at 82 till Friday.
The Central Government has reduced the number of flights to the UK from 60 per week to 30 to curtail the faster-spreading mutant strain in the country.
All those who have tested positive for the new variant of coronavirus are being kept in single-room isolation at designated healthcare facilities by the respective state governments, the ministry had said earlier. Their close contacts have also been put under quarantine.
"A comprehensive contact-tracing exercise has been initiated for their co-travellers, family members and others and genome sequencing on other specimens is going on," the ministry had earlier said.
In Britain, the new Covid-19 virus strain has led to an unprecedented surge in fresh cases. London Mayor Sadiq Khan has declared a "major incident", saying the British capital was "at crisis point" and urgent action was required as beds for coronavirus patients could run out within weeks.
A few days back, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced the strictest restrictions in months to check the Covid-19 spread.
The presence of the new variant of Covid-19, first reported in Britain, has already been reported by several countries, including Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, Lebanon and Singapore.
