The number of people infected with the new UK variant of SARS-CoV-2 in India has reached 109 at present, the Ministry of health and family welfare said on Thursday. On Wednesday, the number was 102 while till January 11, 96 people were found infected with the new strain which is said to be more lethal.

“The total number of persons found infected with the new UK variant genome stands at 109 on Thursday,” the ministry said in a statement here.

All these people have been kept in single room isolation in designated healthcare facilities by respective state governments, it said.

“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 ministry said.

Meanwhile, the ongoing trend of contraction of India’s daily new Covid cases continues with India recording less than 20,000 daily new cases since the last seven days.

In the last 24 hours, only 16,946 persons were found to be infected with COVID in India. In the same period, India also registered 17,652 new recoveries ensuring a net decline of 904 cases in the Active Caseload.

Daily deaths in India are on a sustained decline. Less than 300 daily deaths have been registered for the last 20 days.

India’s Case Fatality Rate stands at 1.44 per cent with 22 States/UTs have cases fatality rate less than the national average.

The active caseload of the country stands at 2,13,603. The share of active cases in the total positive cases has further shrunk to 2.03 per cent.

India’s Total Recoveries stand at 10,146,763 on Thursday. Kerala has reported the maximum number of single day recoveries with 5,158 newly recovered cases. 3,009 people recovered in Maharashtrain the past 24 hours followed by 930 in Chhattisgarh.