"Four out of over 1,000 people who returned from UK tested positive for COVID-19"

Amaravati: Four out of over 1,000 people who returned from the UK to Andhra Pradesh in the past one month have tested positive for COVID-19 and their samples were sent to the National Institute of Virology, Pune, and Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, to determine if they carried the new coronavirus strain. State Health Commissioner Katamaneni Bhaskar said on Friday that 1,148 people arrived to the state from the UK in the last one month and 1,040 of them have been traced so far.

He said in a release that 18 of them were from other states and 16 had invalid addresses, while efforts were on to trace the remaining 88.

Bhaskar said 982 of the UK returnees have been placed under quarantine.


"It will take at least three days to get the result of the four positive samples sent to NIV and CCMB for analysis. But there is no need to panic," Bhaskar added.

The Commissioner said a trial run of COVID-19 vaccination would be conducted at five locations in Krishna district on December 28 in accordance with the Centres directive.

The trial run primarily was for testing whether the web- based software was working properly or not, he said.