Health Officials say 13 more people have tested positive for COVID-19 from the newly emerging wedding cluster.
Speaking to ‘The Press’, Deputy Director General at the Health Ministry Thasleema Usman said that 13 more COVID-19 cases have been confirmed from the cluster and that the total number of cases from the cluster has now reached 62.
The Health Emergency Operations Center HEOC had said earlier that more than 30 guests who had attended a local wedding reception had tested positive for COVID-19.
It is said that more than 120 guests attended the wedding reception held at the SHE building earlier this month and the positive cases now include high-risk patients as well.
Later on, HEOC said that a local who had traveled from the UK recently had tested positive for COVID-19 and that the person is a family member of one of the families linked to the cluster.
HEOC highlighted that the person traveled from the UK after the wedding reception and that the person was not required to quarantine as authorities had not yet tightened the quarantine measures for those traveling from the UK.
HEOC noted that the person had developed symptoms and was tested soon after.
It added that there was no way to determine whether this case is due to the new variant of the COVID-19 pandemic currently rampant in the UK.
But the HEOC said that it had been sending samples abroad for genotyping and that it would continue to do so.
HEOC said that in the meantime, it is working with labs to identify potential cases of the variant.
The Health Protection Agency HPA had mandated that all locals and work permit holders traveling from the UK would be required to stay under quarantine for 10 days.
HPA had said that these travelers would be quarantined at home and would be tested after 5 days of isolation as well as after 10 days of isolation.
