Jaipur: Three members of a family in Sri Ganganagar district of Rajasthan tested positive for the new Covid-19 strain on Monday after which health officials isolated the family and carried out contact tracing to contain spread of the virus.
The family – husband, wife and their five-year-old son – had returned from UK to Hakmabad village in Sadulshahar block of Sri Ganganagar district on December 18.
A total of 538 passengers had arrived from UK in Rajasthan between November 23 and December 23. Of these, 23 belonged to Sri Ganganagar district, said health department officials.
The health department had carried out RT-PCR tests on all the UK arrivals in Rajasthan and initially seven people had been found infected with Covid. Their samples were sent to the National Institute of Virology in Pune and they were found to be infected with the old strain of the virus.
Dr Girdhari Lal, chief medical and health officer, Sri Ganganagar, said the family arrived in their village on December 18. Health officials had conducted RT-PCR tests and they tested positive on December 28.
“After that we took samples again and sent it to an ICMR authorised lab in Delhi for genome sequencing. Their reports came in on Monday and they were found to be infected with the mutant Covid strain,” said Dr Lal.
Dr Lal said the family members have been shifted to the district hospital and kept under isolation. They are asymptomatic and their condition is fine, he said.
Dr Lal said one round of contact tracing of family members has been done and they all tested negative. “We have taken a second round of samples on Monday,” he said.
Health department officials have also carried out one round of screening in Hakmabad village to identify any persons with cold cough or other symptoms, said Dr Lal. He said another round of screening will be carried out on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Rajasthan reported 457 positive coronavirus cases on Monday, taking the total number of cases to 3,10,278. The deaths reported on Monday were four and the total death toll stands at 2714. The active cases in the state are 8189.
