Nagaland: Health Dept Steps Up Vigilance to Detect Covid-19 New Strain

KOHIMA: After the emergence of a new variant strain of COVID-19, the Nagaland Health ministry on Monday released strategies to be put with immediate effect to detect the mutant virus.

According to the official release, all passengers who had arrived from UK after December 20 are to be tracked by the IDSP State Surveillance Units(SSUs) and District Surveillance Units(DSUs).

The testing of these passengers will be done as per ICMR guidelines. If found positive, samples of all positive cases will be sent for Whole Genome Sequencing(WGS), the release said.

Enhanced contact tracing of these positive cases is to be undertaken and all these contacts are to be put in facility quarantine.

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As per statement, the positive cases will be discharged after ensuring two samples testing negative after 14 days.

The government has further directed that 5% of all positive cases from the state will be sent for WGS.

Nagaland did not register any fresh COVID-19 case on Sunday for the first time since the state reported its first coronavirus cases on May 25.

The recovery rate among the coronavirus patients in the state improved to an all-time high of 96.14 per cent as 23 people were cured of the disease.

The state's caseload stands at 11,897, of which 251 cases are active while 11,438 people have recovered, 78 patients have succumbed to the infection and 130 migrated to other states.

Nagaland reported its first three COVID-19 cases among Chennai returnees on May 25.

Dimapur has the highest number of active cases at 100, followed by Kohima (85) and Mokokchung (47).

The state has so far conducted over 1.19 lakh COVID-19 tests, including 72,328 RT-PCR, 36,652 TrueNat and 10,733 rapid antigen tests.

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