New Covid-19 strain in UK: The new strain of Coronavirus in Britain has caused panic all over the world. Many countries have banned flights from Britain. In India too, all flights to and from the UK have been closed till 31 December. However, the news of relief for India is that this new strain has not been found so far in the travelers who have come here for some time via United Kingdom (UK). Although some travelers have definitely been found corona infected. According to NITI Aayog member Dr VK Paul, the mutation of the corona virus is being continuously tested and the case of the new strain B1.1.7 which is present in the UK has not been revealed here yet.
The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has issued a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for passengers arriving from the UK in the last one month. Paul spoke to UK scientists and said that the infectivity of this new virus strain has increased by 70 percent. Currently, vaccine trials are going on in many countries around the world and the process of applying it has started in some countries. However, it is not yet clear whether the vaccines that have been prepared so far and that they are either running trials or have been approved for their emergency use will be effective against the new UK strain.
How dangerous is the new strain, not yet clear
In South and East England, cases of corona infection are increasing rapidly. In this case, an investigation was done about this, and last week, a new strain of corona virus was detected. It has been named VUI (Variant Under Investigation) 202012/01 or B.1.1.7 Lineage. According to Public Health England (PHE), 1108 cases infected with this new strain have been reported as of 13 December, with the highest number being from southern and eastern England.
According to PHE, this new strain is infecting the corona virus faster than other strains. However, it is not yet revealed how dangerous this new strain is compared to other strains. According to PHE, mutations occur in the spike proteins of any virus and they affect human cells differently.
According to the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) on 18 December, there is not enough data on how dangerous this new strain is. According to the expert body, four people have died in about 1 thousand people infected with the new strain. Let us know that the first detection of this new strain of corona virus was found in September but it was not given any name at that time and usually during the investigation when only two genes came out instead of three, it was tested and Revealed
4 thousand mutations of corona virus so far
When a virus enters the human body, it is natural to have one to two mutations on an average every month. According to the British consortium COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK), there have been about 4,000 mutations in the spike protein of SARS-KOV-2 at this time. The COG-UK genome analyzes the sequencing. According to PHE, nothing can be said clearly on whether Pfizer vaccine will be able to be protected from new strains.
UK strain has reached the international level
According to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, UK variant strains have been found in three sequences from Denmark and one sequence from Australia. These samples were collected in November last month. This shows that now the UK variant strain has spread internationally. Italy and France have also confirmed their UK strain here.
After 25 November, travelers coming from UK will be examined
According to the Union Health Secretary Bhushan Kumar, the list of travelers coming from the UK from November 25 to December 23 will be shared with the states so that they can be monitored. They will be contacted and efforts will be made to ensure that they are not infected.
According to the SOP issued by the central government, the travelers who have come to India from UK from November 25 to December 8 will contact District Surveillance Officers and they will be asked to self-monitor their health. Apart from this, between 9 December to 23 December, these officers will go to see those officers from UK from India every day for 14 days to see if they have any health problems. These passengers have also been asked to self-monitor for 28 days.
If a passenger from the UK is found to be corona positive then the genome sequencing of their sample will be done. If their genome sequencing found that they were infected with the new strain, they would be kept in a separate isolation unit.
Some travelers coming from UK infected corona
The Maharashtra government has released the standard operating protocol. Under this, people who have reached Maharashtra in the last few days from Europe, South Africa and Middle East, will have to stay in Institutional Quarantine for 14 days, that is, they cannot live in their home. On Monday, four flights arrived from the UK at Mumbai Airport, leaving 690 passengers. There were no flights to and from London on Tuesday, 22 December.
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Passengers from UK were also tested in the capital Delhi. He has been quarantined institutional. On Monday, December 21, six passengers on board a flight from London were also found corona infected. In the last two weeks, 6-7 thousand people have landed at Delhi Airport and now they will go door-to-door health test.
Similarly, two passengers from the UK were also found corona infected at Kolkata Airport. On Sunday, 20 December, 222 passengers landed in a flight from the UK at Kolkata’s Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport, in which 25 passengers who did not have COVID reports were tested, two of them corona test results came positive the day before. Now the people who came in contact with those passengers will be contacted and they will be asked for home isolation.
Source: www.financialexpress.com