Australia, Italy report detection of patients with new ‘UK Covid-19 strain’ Meanwhile in Italy, the health ministry on Sunday said that it detected a patient with the new Covid-19 strain found in Britain.

Greg Hunt, Australia’s Federal Health Minister said on Monday that the new strain has been detected in a small number of cases, The Guardian reported.

SNS, 22 Dec 2020 : According to the reports, the new strain in patients has been detected in Australia and Italy even as many countries have either suspended or temporarily halted flights to and fro from Britain after the discovery of a new mutant Covid-19 strain.

Greg Hunt, Australia’s Federal Health Minister said on Monday that the new strain has been detected in a small number of cases, The Guardian reported.

Meanwhile in Italy, the health ministry on Sunday said that it detected a patient with the new Covid-19 strain found in Britain. The patient, who is now in isolation, returned from the UK in the past few days.

The fear over the fast spread of the new strain has led many countries to put new restrictions on international travel.

Amid the increasing spread of a new strain of coronavirus from the United Kingdom, the Indian government has decided to halt flights to and from the UK from tomorrow midnight till December 31.

“Considering the prevailing situation in the UK, Indian govt has decided that all flights originating from the UK to India shall be temporarily suspended till 11:59 pm, 31st December. This suspension to start w.e.f. 11.59 pm, 22nd December,” the Ministry of Civil Aviation said.

“As a measure of abundant precaution, passengers arriving from UK in all transit flights (flights that have taken off or flights which are reaching India before 22nd Dec at 11.59 pm) should be subject to mandatory RT-PCR test on arrival at airports,” it added.

Earlier in the day, assuring the country to not to worry over the new strain of coronavirus reported in the United Kingdom, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said that “there’s no need to panic”.

The Health Ministry had called a meeting today of its joint monitoring group on COVID-19 to discuss the crisis.

Amid the reports of the spread of the virus, many countries, including France, Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Irish Republic, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Switzerland and Canada, had earlier announced the suspension of UK flights, the BBC reported.

The new variant has spread quickly in London and south-east England, but health officials in the UK said that there is no evidence that it is more deadly or would react differently to vaccines.

Britain has warned this new strain of coronavirus was “out of control”, and imposed a stringent new stay-at-home lockdown from Sunday.

On December 19, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had announced that the newly identified strain of the virus may be up to 70 per cent more transmissible while Health Secretary Matt Hancock emphasized that the new variant is “out of control”.

As per the official data, India recorded 24,337 new COVID-19 cases with 25,709 recoveries and 333 deaths in the last 24 hours. The total cases now stand at 1,00,55,560 with total recoveries at 96,06,111. Out of these, 3,03,639 are active cases of Covid.

(With IANS inputs)