GURUGRAM: A 22-year-old man who returned from the UK on December 19 tested positive for Covid-19 on Tuesday. The health department has sent the sample to the CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi’s Sukhdev Vihar for genome
sequencing to ascertain if the person is infected with the new variant of the virus.
The test result is expected in two days, said Gurugram chief medical officer Virender Yadav. The person, who is currently isolated at Mom’s PG in Sector 22, lives with his parents and his sister in Om Nagar. Their samples have also been taken for RT-PCR testing.
So far, Gurugram has received a list of 1,240 passengers who have returned from the UK. Out of these, 713 have been scrutinised, 164 have gone back to their respective states and 32 are untraceable. The remaining 313 passengers had returned before December 8 and had completed their quarantine period. Of the 713 people tested, the results of 349 have returned negative while those of the others are awaited.
According to the guidelines, the district surveillance officer will facilitate sample collection, irrespective of previous testing at the place of origin or on arrival at the airport. In case passengers have moved to locations outside the city of arrival, intimation should be sent to the concerned district or state.
Meanwhile, for the fifth consecutive day on Tuesday, the city added less than 100 Covid-19 cases. A total of 94 people tested positive, taking the caseload to 56,634. The health department said 128 patients also recovered on the day, bringing the total number of recoveries to 55,316. The recovery rate stands at 97.5%.
One person also succumbed to the infection. So far, 343 people in the city have died of Covid, of whom 266 had comorbidities.
The city has a total of 975 active cases, and 886 of the patients are in home isolation. This is the first time in four months that the number of active cases has dropped to less than 1,000. On August 31, the district had 994 active cases.
On Tuesday, 12 people were sent to institutional quarantine facilities. So far, 6,59,995 people have been put under surveillance in Gurugram. In the past 24 hours, the health authorities collected 4,368 samples for antigen and RT-PCR tests. So far, 6,56,409 samples have been sent for testing so far, out of which 5,95,407 returned negative while the results of 2,571 are awaited.
