Even as the world is looking forward to the vaccination drives that have begun in a number of countries, against the COVID-19 Novel Corona Virus Pandemic, there are a number of concerns which have arisen due to the new mutated strains of the Virus. The UK has seen a sudden surge in the number of new infections, which have arisen due to the mutated new strain of the Virus. Even though many countries immediately suspended travel to and from the UK, the Virus has still spread to a number of other countries. India was one of the countries that announced a temporary travel ban to the UK, till December 31st and it began on December 22nd midnight! All passengers who arrived before the travel ban, were screened with COVID tests at the airport itself.

Those who tested positive, were immediately shifted to institutional quarantine and those who tested negative, were asked to go to their houses but remain in home quarantine for a period of 14 days! Despite there being a number of rumours of the positive cases being the new strain of the Corona Virus, they were sent to the National Institute of Virology at Pune for further testing. Now, the Health Ministry has confirmed that 6 people have tested positive for the new strain of the Corona Virus. These 6 tests include 3 from the NIMHANS in Bengaluru, 2 from CCMB in Hyderabad and 1 in the NIV at Pune. All of these infected people have been kept in isolated single-rooms, in health care facilities of the respective State Governments! 

Contact tracing has happened for all the infected people and those who had been in very close contact to them have also been kept in quarantine. The government has mentioned that there were 33,000 passengers who landed in India from the UK, between 25th November and December 23rd midnight! As per the central government's directive, all these passengers are being tracked and subjected to RT-PCR tests, to ascertain if they are COVID positive or not. Of these, 114 have tested positive so far and all these samples have been sent to 10 INSACOG labs across the country, for genome sequencing. The Central government has also been closely monitoring the situation and advising the states on how to handle it. So far, the new strain of the Corona Virus has also been detected in Netherlands, Denmark, Australia, Italy, France, Sweden, Spain, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Japan, Lebanon and Singapore.