24 UK returnees to two Telugu states test corona positive

Amaravati/Hyderabad, Dec 26 : Six returnees from the United Kingdom to Andhra Pradesh have tested coronavirus positive so far while such flyers in neighbouring Telangana number 18, health officials said on Saturday.
Authorities in Andhra Pradesh have identified 1,214 people who returned to the state from the UK so far. The Health Department has traced 1,158 while efforts are on to trace the remaining 56.
In all, 1,101 UK returnees were shifted to quarantine centres, of which six tested positive.
The samples of positive cases have now been sent to the National Institute of Virology at Pune and Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) for genome sequencing to find out if hey are infected by the new strain of the virus found in the UK.
Of the positive cases, two are from Guntur district while one each was reported from East Godavari, Krishna, Anantapur, and Nellore districts.
Meanwhile, in Telangana, two more UK returnees tested positive, taking the total such cases to 18. Samples of the infected persons have been sent to CCMB for genome sequencing.