India is gearing up to detect and contain the highly contagious UK coronavirus strain as the national task force on COVID-19 held a meeting over the new mutant strain.

As per the reports, more than 50 samples of people who have returned from the UK are currently being sequenced at six labs across the country to find out if they have the mutant strain.

District surveillance officers are identifying passengers who have arrived from the country in the last one month, officials said.

A genomic surveillance consortium called INSACOG has been formed under the leadership of the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) for laboratory and epidemiological surveillance of circulating strains of SARS-CoV-2 in the country, the government said.

It is proposed to continue enhanced genomic surveillance for early detection and containment of the UK variant SARS-CoV-2 strains. However, it is important to understand that like all other RNA viruses, SARS-CoV-2 will continue to mutate. The mutated virus can also be contained by measures like social distancing, hand hygiene, wearing masks and also by an effective vaccine, as and when available.

NTF recommended that in addition to the existing surveillance strategies, it is critical to conduct enhanced genomic surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 specially in incoming passengers from UK. Besides, it will also be critical to conduct genome sequencing in samples where there is dropout of the S gene in lab diagnosis, proven cases of re-infections etc. Routine genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 from representative samples all across the samples needs to be a continuous and well planned activity.

The Ministry of Health has issued new standard operating procedure (SOP) due to new strain of coronavirus detected which includes RT-PCR testing on arrival, separate isolation for those testing positive, institutional quarantine for co-passengers for those who tested positive for travellers arriving from the United Kingdom.

The new SOPs have been issued as a new mutant variant of the coronavirus was detected and the Ministry of Health said that the virus is estimated by the European Center for Disease Control (ECDC) to be more transmissible and affecting the younger population.