Third case of Delta plus variant found in Gujarat; Health authorities launch contact tracing

Ahmedabad, June 29: Health authorities in Gujarat have launched contact tracing of a woman from Jamnagar city who was infected with the Delta plus variant of coronavirus in May but eventually recovered, officials said on Tuesday.

She was the third patient to be detected with Delta plus in Gujarat, which currently has no active case of the highly infectious variant, they said. This was the third such case of the Delta Plus variant in Gujarat wherein the patient has recovered, additional chief secretary (Health) Manoj Aggarwal, told news agency.

To find out the presence of the Delta plus variant, the Health Department regularly collects random samples of positive patients and sends them to various laboratories for analysis, which takes considerable time, said Aggarwal.

A woman from Jamnagar was admitted to a hospital after her coronavirus report came positive in May-end.

"She was discharged in the first week of June after recovery. We had sent her sample, which was part of several other random samples, to the National Institute of Virology, Pune, for further analysis. As per the report we received from the NIV, that woman had contracted the Delta plus variant," said the senior bureaucrat.

He added that the woman is stable at present and a drive to trace her contacts has been launched by the local administration to check if the infection has spread in others. On June 25, the state government had said that two patients - one each from Surat and Vadodara - who were found infected with the variant in April, had recovered.