AGARTALA: Fear gripped Tripura after the deadly and highly infectious Delta plus variant of Covid-19 were confirmed in a large number of samples.
Besides imposing stringent weekend curfew across the state from Saturday noon, the administration made it mandatory for all to maintain at least six feet distance from each other on the roads and public places other than the family members.
The director, health services, Dr Radha Debbarma, said the ongoing corona curfew from Monday to Friday between 2pm and 5am has been extended till next week to break the chain of new strain of Covid before it spreads. “Since it is the first in the Northeast, we are discussing the strategy to counter the situation,” she added.
The state surveillance officer of Covid, Dr Deep Debbarma, said Tripura reported a new strain – Delta plus, the deadly and highly infectious variant of Covid in genome sequencing of 90 per cent of the samples. The state government had sent 151 samples from all eight districts of the state to the accredited genome testing laboratory in West Bengal last week and the report arrived on Saturday.
As many as 115 samples of West Tripura district, eight in Sepahijala, five in Gomati, four in Unokoti, two each from North and South Tripura districts and one each in Khowai and Dhalai districts were found to carry the Delta plus variant. At least 10 samples have been found to be the plain Delta variant and another three as the Alpha variant of the virus, Dr Debbarma said.
