HYDERABAD: THE Telangana Health Department has not lowered its guard in its fight against the UK strain of Covid-19 even as flights resumed from January 8. Till Wednesday, sources informed that the State has 10 positive cases from the UK who are admitted in the hospital and whose samples are undergoing genome sequencing at the CCMB. It is yet to be ascertained if these patients have the mutant Covid-19 strain.
Earlier in the week, in a submission to the High Court, the State said that it had detected four patients with the UK strain. According to Government of India guidelines, the State has been testing all UK returnees at the airport. The samples of those testing positive are first sent to the Telangana Institute of Medical Sciences (TIMS) for isolation and eventually, to the C C M B f o r g e n o m e sequencing.
“If the genome sequencing is negative, then the patient is given an option to isolate from home or continue to stay at the hospital. If positive, they are put through stricter isolation and discharged from the facility only after two negative tests reports that are 24 hours apart,” explained Dr Vimala Thomas, Director of TIMS. She added that the hospital has a separate floor and staff to manage these cases and even the Covid-positive patients are isolated from one another.
Active cases down to 2,819
The State detected 147 new Covid- 19 cases and 399 recoveries on Tuesday after conducting 16,486 tests. With this, the active cases in the State have fallen to a seven-month low of just 2,819, of which 1295 are admitted to the hospital. Meanwhile, one death on the day took the toll to 1,593.