State Health dept keep close tab on returnees from UK

Kolkata: The state Health department has been keeping a careful watch on those who have arrived in the city from the UK within a period between November 25 and December 21.

Surveillance has been strengthened after six persons who have recently returned to India from the UK have tested positive for the new mutated strain of Coronavirus.

A fear was triggered after two UK returnees tested positive for Covid and they were under treatment at two city hospitals. No new strain was found in their samples giving a sigh of relief to the state health department.

Senior health officials are however not taking the matter lightly as they have already started tracking those who have returned to the city from the UK and later reached their respective places in the districts.

Many of these people with whom the health department could establish contact have been urged to remain in isolation till the RT-PCR tests are done. UK returnees despite having tested negative would be kept in quarantine for at least two weeks to find out if they develop any

symptoms.

The health department has been monitoring if the UK returnees are properly following the quarantine norms. Surveillance is being carried out in the district level as well. Health department sources said that more than 4,000 people returned to Kolkata from the UK between November 25 and December 21. Out of the total number around 83 were from Kolkata.

In some cases the health department failed to establish contacts with the UK returnees as the contact numbers given by the Centre are not working. As a result, the department has been facing difficulties to trace the persons.

It was learnt that apart from Kolkata, there were residents of North 24-Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly, Murshidabad, Darjeeling, Kalimpong among the UK returnees. Fresh lockdown was imposed in the UK after the new strain of Coronavirus was found.

According to the experts the new strain found in the UK is more transmissible than previously circulating variants, with an estimated potential to increase the reproductive number.