COVID-19: Indian Embassy suspends all consular services in UK till Jan 8 amid restrictions

The Indian Embassy in the United Kingdom has decided to suspend all the consular services till January 8, 2021, as the country is bearing the brunt of the new strain of Coronavirus with an alarming surge of the new infections daily. The Embassy took to Twitter to urge people to follow it on the website and social media accounts such as Twitter and Facebook for information regarding the resumption of services.

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Amid the continuing pandemic, the new strain of coronavirus first found in the UK has caused a stir as it is reported to be more transmissible than other SARS-CoV-2 variants. The new variant has caused havoc in the UK with a fresh load of cases reaching close to 50,000 cases daily, as per the UK Government website. The variant has also been detected in multiple countries around the world. The presence of the new UK variant has already been reported by Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, Lebanon, and Singapore, so far.

India on Thursday reported five new cases of the new strain of coronavirus taking the total cases of COVID-19 mutant in the country to 25. Previous, 14 were reported on Wednesday and six on Tuesday.

The mutation of COVID-19 first emerged in South East England and experts stated that the new strain is 70% more transmissible than the previous one. The new strain of Coronavirus is more dominating than the previous one, according to the experts and has compelled UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to announce stricter stay-at-home lockdown measures in the UK amid the festive season.

In a preemptive move, India suspended flights from the UK on December 23 till the end of the year which the Civil Aviation Ministry on December 30 announced the extension of flight ban till January 7. Meanwhile, India on Thursday reported 21,821 new COVID-19 cases. The active Coronavirus cases in India have reduced drastically and the tally stands at 2,57,656 as on Thursday while the tally of recovered cases has reached 98,60,280 with the addition of 26,139 recoveries on Thursday.

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