Patna: Health department authorities are working overtime to trace everyonewho returned to Bihar from the United Kingdom where a new strain of COVID-19 was found.
Authorities said 45 of the total 226 passengers who returned from the UK still remain traceless despite their constant efforts to find them. According to information provided by the health department, a total of 226 passengers have returned to Bihar from the UK since November 21. Of them, 181 have been traced but 45 still remain missing, health officials informed.
“We are constantly trying to locate the missing returnees. We have sent the names, contact numbers and address of passengers to the district medical officers concerned to track them and collect their swab samples,” Patna’s civil surgeon Vibha Kumari Singh told the media on Saturday.
Phones switched off
Officials said the passengers could not be traced since their addresses were found either incomplete or their mobile phones switched off. Quite many have left for other states after reaching Bihar. Among the total UK returnees, a maximum of 96 were from Patna, 19 from Gaya, 13 from East Champaran, 11 from Muzaffarpur and rest from other districts.
A very good thing, however, is that 101 of the 181 people traced so far have tested negative for coronavirus. Health officials said positive samples would be sent to the National Institute of Virology, Pune for gene sequencing. “But none of the 101 samples sent for RT-PCR tests has tested positive so far,” State Health Society’s administrative officer Khalid Arshad told the media on Saturday.
The health department in the meanwhile conducted a dry run of COVID-19 vaccine administration in three districts of Bihar on Saturday. These districts include Patna, Jamui and West Champaran. The mock drill involved crowd management, identification of beneficiaries, mock vaccination and their observation for 30 minutes.
COVID-19 has claimed 1403 lives in Bihar, besides infecting 253,652 persons so far.
