New Delhi, Dec 29 (IANS): As many as 32 people, comprising those who have returned from the UK -- where a more infectious strain of coronavirus has been reported -- and their contacts, are currently admitted in a special ward set up at Delhi government-run Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan (LNJP) Hospital, hospital officials said on Tuesday.

"A total 32 people are admitted at the hospital," the hospital administration told IANS.

Earlier day, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had said the the national capital is prepared to deal with the new mutant strain of coronavirus, if need be.

Nationwide, a total of six UK returnees have been found to be positive with the new variant genome, the Centre announced on Tuesday. The British government had recently announced that the newly identified strain of the virus found in their population is up to 70 per cent more transmissible.

On December 22, Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain had said that people who travelled to Delhi from the UK in the past 10 days are being traced, tested and advised quarantine.

"Our strategy for this is that we will identify all those who are based out of Delhi in the past 2 weeks, and conduct door to door testing for them," he had said.

The presence of the new UK Variant has already been reported by Denmark, tge Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, Lebanon and Singapore.

India has put in place a pro-active and preventive strategy to detect and contain the mutant variant of the virus, which includes temporary suspension of flights coming from the UK from the midnight of December 23 till December 31. It also includes mandatory testing of all UK returnee air passengers through RT-PCR test.

The Central Government has also recognised ten regional laboratories where states will send five per cent of their Covid-19 positive samples for genome sequencing to detect the new coronavirus variant.