New Delhi:
The Health Ministry has named a meeting today of its joint monitoring group on COVID-19 to go over a mutant coronavirus that has spread swiftly in the UK, government sources have mentioned. Several European nations have banned flights to and from Britain. No policy selection has been taken by India on any flight ban from the UK but the matter will be provided a critical consideration, persons with direct information of the matter mentioned.
Britain has warned this new strain of coronavirus was “out of control”, and imposed a stringent new remain-at-house lockdown from Sunday.
The joint monitoring group chaired by the Director General of Health Services (DGHS) will meet today about 10 am to go over the mutated variant of coronavirus reported from the UK, government sources mentioned.
The World Health Organisation’s India representative Roderico H Ofrin, who is also a member of the monitoring group, is probably to participate in the meeting.
The Netherlands has imposed a ban on UK flights and Belgium mentioned it would comply with suit. Germany, also, stopped flights from Britain and is taking into consideration a equivalent move as “a serious option” for flights from South Africa, exactly where a further variant of coronavirus was found.
Italy will join the ban in order to guard its citizens, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio wrote on Facebook, without the need of specifying when the measures would come into force. Austria’s Health Ministry told the APA news agency that it would also impose a flight ban, the information of which had been nonetheless getting worked out.
British Health Secretary Matt Hancock on Sunday warned that the strict measures that impact just about a third of England’s population could remain in location till the virus vaccine is completely rolled out. “We acted very quickly and decisively,” Mr Hancock told Sky News, justifying the “stay at home” order, ban on family members gatherings more than Christmas and closure of non-critical shops. “Unfortunately, the new strain was out of control. We have got to get it under control.”
The mutation of the coronavirus is worrying scientists across the globe as drug firms are nonetheless in their early stages of rolling out vaccines.
Scientists 1st found the new variant – which they think is 70 per cent more transmissible – in a patient in September. And Public Health England, a government agency, raised alarm on Friday when modelling revealed the complete seriousness of the new strain.
Britain’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty pointed out that though the new strain was drastically more infectious, “there is no current evidence to suggest (it) causes a higher mortality rate or that it affects vaccines and treatments, although urgent work is underway to confirm this”, news agency AFP reported.
India today added 26,624 coronavirus infections in 24 hours, taking its tally to 1,00,31,223, according to the Health Ministry information. The quantity of fresh infections is 5.8 per cent larger than Saturday, when the nation registered 25,152 instances to take the total infections to more than 1 crore mark.
With inputs from AFP