New Delhi: After the notification of the new, mutated variant of the coronavirus has come to the fore, there is palpable anxiety with people wondering if the new strain has reached India. 


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The Health Ministry has assured people that there is no proof that the new variant has entered India and it is too early to jump into any conclusions.


The Health Ministry in a statement said,“To establish the presence of a mutant virus, it is necessary to establish a genome sequencing which could be done only through designated labs of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Department of Biotechnology, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), and National Centre for Disease Control.” 


Further the statement informed that the genome sequencing of passengers from UK has not been completed yet.


“Genome sequencing has not so far been done in respect of the 15 passengers of the 590 who landed in Mumbai from the UK on December 22. Therefore, it’s incorrect to say that the new strain of the coronavirus has entered India until it is established by a designated laboratory.” 


Notably, as many as 22 passengers flying from the United Kingdom to different cities in India over the past few days have tested positive for coronavirus. As per experts, nearly 50 per cent of these UK travellers could be potential carriers of the new more infectious COVID-19 strain. 


Meanwhile, the Health Ministry has reviewed the status of passengers coming from the UK to India and directed states and Union Territories to send samples of those found coronavirus positive to six laboratories identified for genome sequencing.


The laboratories are: - the CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi, the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, the DBT-Institute of Life Sciences in Bhubaneswar, DBT-InStem-NCBS in Bengaluru, the DBT-National Institute of Biomedical Genomics in West Bengal and the ICMR-National Institute of Virology in Pune.


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