Aizawl: Mizoram has not reported any case of new COVID-19 variants till date, an official said on Friday.
The Mizoram government has sent 326 samples of COVID- 19 infected positive patients to National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG) in West Bengal for genome sequencing, state spokesperson for COVID-19 Dr Pachuau Lalmalsawma said.
The samples were sent between December 2020 and April this year, he said.
“Of the 326 samples, results of 69 samples have been received and all of them tested negative for new variants of COVID-19,” Pachuau told PTI.
He said that the results of the remaining samples are awaited.
Mizoram has so far reported 5,220 COVID-19 cases of which 4,600 patients have recovered from the disease.
The state now has 608 active COVID-19 cases while the death toll so far is 12.
The state capital Aizawl and 10 other district headquarters are now under virtual lockdown to break the chain of COVID-19 transmission.
The virtual lockdown will end on April 26 at 4 am.
According to Pachuau, who is also the state nodal officer of Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP), 4,216 people, including 1,001 security personnel were diagnosed with COVID-19 in 2020.
While 2,220 patients have travel history, the rest 1,996 were locally infected, he said.
He said that at least 1,004 COVID-19 cases were reported from first January till April 23 this year and 552 cases were locally transmitted while the rest 452 patients have travel history.
Mizoram reported its first COVID-19 case on March 24 last year.
Aizawl district reported the highest cases at 3,502, followed by Lunglei district, which reported 454 cases till Friday.
