Bihar health dept searching for 96 UK returnees as 21 test positive for new strain of coronavirus in India

PATNA—The Bihar health department is looking for 96 persons who returned to Patna in the last one month from United Kingdom which has reported a new highly contagious strain of COVID-19.

A health department official has told the local media that they were searching for these UK returnees on the basis of information provided by the Airport Authority.

“We are trying to collect their swab samples and sending them to laboratories for test. We will start contact tracing if anyone is found having symptoms of new virus strain,” Patna civil surgeon Dr Vibha Kumari Singh told a Hindi daily on Wednesday.

According to her, all the returnees had been told to stay indoors under home quarantine until their test report come out.

The health department has acted after 21 UK returnees testing positive for new UK variant genome of SARS-COV-2 virus.