Delhi Chief Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday demanded from the centre that flights to and from Singapore must be banned because of a new strain. He said the strain had the potential to trigger a third wave in India. Union Civil Aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri later assured the leader that the centre was monitoring the situation and all precautions were being taken. Here is all we know about the variant.
The Singapore government has said that a mutant variant has been found to be affecting children.
Singapore's Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said in a press conference that the strain, B.1.617, "appears to affect children more".
"Some of these mutations are much more virulent and they seem to attack the younger children," Education Minister Chan Chun Sing was quoted by news agency AFP as saying.
Singapore is one of the most successful countries in the world when comes to Covid management. The country has so far reported over 60,000 coronavirus cases and just 31 Covid-linked deaths.
On Sunday, the country confirmed some cases among children linked to a cluster at a tuition centre.
Singapore has said it will close all its schools from Wednesday because of the variant till May 28.
The government is also planning to vaccinate children under the age of 16 against the coronavirus.
Singapore, meanwhile, has denied that it has any homegrown strain that's affecting children.
"There is no truth in the assertion that there is a new COVID strain in Singapore. Phylogenetic testing has shown that the B.1.617.2 variant is the prevalent strain in many of the COVID cases, including in children, in recent weeks in Singapore," its embassy in India tweeted.
With inputs from AFP
