Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has reported that 60 cases of the new strain Covid-19 were detected in Mumbai since 22, 2020.
According to officers of the BMC, 30 of the 60 latest strains of Covid-19 come from the UK, while others from the Middle East, Europe or South Africa come from other areas.
For seven days, BMC has quarantined all those returning to hotels on arrival from the above-listed countries.
Afterwards, passengers are checked for RT-PCR Covid-19. When anyone tests positive, they are hospitalized and send their sample to the National Institute of Virology (NIV) to determine if the new strain is present.
For negative tests, it is advisable that passengers go home and quarantine for 7 days. In the last month, more than 25,000 passengers from the countries mentioned above came to the region.
Passengers were subjected to quarantine on arrival
“The spread of the new strain in Mumbai is not much, as we have only detected 60 cases up to now. Of the 60 cases, 30 are from those who returned from the UK and stayed from others,” said Suresh Kakani, additional city commissioner of the BMC.
Kakani said: “We do not give the low level of detection any explanation but take all precautions, so the detection of the new Covid-19 strain could be low. We search them and quarantine them for seven days whenever a passenger from the UK, Europe, Middle East or South Africa arrives at Mumbai airport. Testing is carried out after this.”
As all passengers were subjected to quarantine on arrival, the BMC officials confirmed that close contacts were not possible.
“The idea behind the quarantining on arrival is not to establish close contacts,” Kakani added.
“However, before we began quarantining incoming passengers in hotels we had closer contacts with the five new strains. The same thing is to monitor close friends, to sanitize their houses and, if possible, to seal their buildings,” Kakani further added
BMC reported, on 4 January, that in five new Covid 19 strain cases found in those returning from the UK, 40 of these five positive patients had traced closely contacts and all 40 checked the Covid 19 negative.
