New Delhi, Jan 4 (IANS): Nine more Covid patients have been detected carrying the new and highly infectious strain of novel coronavirus from the UK, taking the total number of such cases to 38 in the country, the Union Health Ministry said on Monday.

All the nine latest additions have been reported from a single laboratory in the national capital, which accounts for nearly half of the total cases of new mutant coronavirus strain. The Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) have reported all the new nine cases detected on Monday.

The National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) have also reported 8 cases till date. Together, NCDC and IGIB have detected 18 of the total 38 cases.

Earlier, 4 new cases of the UK strain were detected on January 1, when the total count had reached 29.

A government official said all the 38 persons have been kept in single-room isolation in designated health care facilities while their close contacts have also been put under quarantine.

"Comprehensive contact tracing has been initiated for co-travellers, family contacts and others. Genome sequencing on other specimens is underway," the official added.

The health ministry stated that the situation is under watch and regular advice is being provided to the states for enhanced surveillance, containment, testing and dispatch of samples to INSACOG labs. The samples have so far been sequenced in six of the 10 designated labs across the country.

Of the total 38, the mutated UK strain was detected in the samples of eight persons at the NCDC, 11 in the IGIB, one in the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG), Kalyani (near Kolkata), five in the National Institute of Virology in Pune, three in the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad and 10 were sequenced at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) Bengaluru.