Centre writes to states, asks them to follow SOPs as new coronavirus strain reaches India

The letter also states that those passengers who have arrived from the UK in India since the last one month shall be contacted by the District Surveillance Officer and monitored in the community.

Moneycontrol News

December 30, 2020 / 03:56 PM IST

Representative image (Image: Reuters)

The Centre on December 30 wrote to states asking them to follow the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) as laid down by the Health Ministry in the context of a new variant of coronavirus detected in the United Kingdom (UK) and now in India.

This comes amid reports that a total of 20 people who returned to India from the UK have tested positive for the new coronavirus variant so far.

On December 29, the government said six UK returnees have been found to be positive with the new UK variant genome.

Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal, in the letter to the states, said that samples of those passengers who are travelling from or transiting through airports in the UK and test positive shall be subjected to spike gene-based RT-PCR test.

Also Read: New COVID-19 strain reaches India: Does it spread easily? Vaccines won't work? Here are all your questions answered

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

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