Six people who have returned to India from the UK have tested positive for the UK variant of COVID-19, the Union government said on Tuesday. Three of these samples were tested at NIMHANS, in Bengaluru, two at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad and one from the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune.

“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 government said in a statement issued on Tuesday morning.

The government said that between November 25 and December 23, 33,000 passengers landed in India from various UK airports, and were all tracked. Of these people, 114 have found to be positive for COVID-19. The samples of those positive were sent to 10 INSACOG labs (NIBMG Kolkata, ILS Bhubaneswar, NIV Pune, CCS Pune, CCMB Hyderabad, CDFD Hyderabad, InSTEM Bengaluru, NIMHANS Bengaluru, IGIB Delhi, NCDC Delhi) for genome sequencing.