Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir government on Wednesday extended lockdown restrictions in the region till January 31.
Earlier on Monday, the Ministry of Home Affairs had announced the extension of the previous COVID-related guidelines while asking people to remain vigilant against the new variant of the virus in the United Kingdom.
All existing protocols and instructions will continue to remain valid till 31.01.2021, the Jammu and Kashmir government said in a press note today.
The ministry said the mutated UK strain was detected in eight samples at the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), one at the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG), Kalyani (near Kolkata), one at the National Institute of Virology (NIV) Pune, seven at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences Hospital (NIMHANS) Bengaluru, two at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad and one at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), Delhi.
All these persons have been kept in single-room isolation in designated health care facilities by respective state governments. Their close contacts have also been put under quarantine. Comprehensive contact tracing has been initiated for co-travellers, family contacts, and others. Genome sequencing on other specimens is going on,” the Health Ministry said. (PTK)