75 UK returnees yet to be traced in Karnataka: Health minister

Bengaluru: Karnataka health minister, K. Sudhakar on Monday said that the Home department and Bengaluru Civic Body are yet to track 75 passengers who returned from England after the new strain of Covid virus was detected two weeks ago.

Sudhakar told reporters that he was in touch with the home department and Bengaluru Civic Body authorities concerned to keep track of those 75 UK returnees who are missing since the campaign to detect, trace and treat was launched 10 days ago.

"This needs meticulous investigation and detection. They (Home and Bengaluru Civic Body) authorities need more time. The Government was trying to help these 75 returnees, they need to understand this," he explained.

Answering to a question, the minister said that of these 75 returnees three returnees have submitted addresses of their country of origin while remaining 72 returnees have given their overseas cell number, as a result of this, the authorities are finding it difficult to locate them.

"We have approached immigration authorities and they too have given details whatever we had sought. But most of these details furnished by these missing passengers are incomplete. We cannot term this as immigration authorities' mistake, but our people are working hard to track all of those missing," he said.

The minister claimed that only 10 are infected with a new variant virus so far in the state. "It is not big number given the number of people who disembarked in the last one month," he said

He added that so far the total number of Covid positive among UK returnees reached 48 and of these 34 are those who returned from the UK while 14 are their primary or secondary contacts who tested Covid positive. "But the new strain of the virus is found only in 10 among these 48 cases," he said.

"All of them are undergoing treatment and are without any serious health condition. They will recover soon," he said in response to a question.

"Their swab samples are sent to the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences (Nimhans) for carrying out genome sequencing tests and 10 among them were confirmed to be infected by the new variant of the virus," he explained.

It may be worth noting here, a total of 5068 passengers returned to the state from England since November 25 to December 31 in two flights-Air India and British Airways.

"Of these 5068 passengers, 4238 passengers landed in Bengaluru from December 9 to December 31 and among those landed 810 are from other states. Karnataka Health and home departments took steps to inform their counterparts concerned of those states," the minister had stated on Friday