The 5 per cent random samples from Covid-positive people per state (new cases detected since November 25) which the government will test for mutations will include flyers from nations other than the UK as the strain is now widespread.
In good news, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Prime Minister K Vijay Raghavan said the current vaccines would work against the variant and there was no evidence to the contrary. “The virus variants are not sufficient to make the vaccines ineffective,” said Raghavan, advising “extraordinary caution as the mutant was 70 per cent more infectious”.
Most of the tracked 30,000 UK returnees came between December 21 midnight and December 23. The 28-day tracking period beginning November 25 was adopted to be on the safer side as the virus incubation time is 14 days, Bhushan said.