Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: A day after India’s Covid-19 caseload crossed the 10 million mark amid hopes of vaccination to start in January, Europe reported a fresh, super-spreader coronavirus strain (variant) striking the United Kingdom and spreading to other nations, as countries began to take steps to stop aviation, cancel Christmas, and mull fresh lockdowns.
As expected by some scientists, the coronavirus, which underwent at least half-a-dozen mutations in 2020 in different countries, lay dormant for some weeks and has struck again as winter progressed.
The Indian benchmark indices tumbled on Monday with financial, auto, and metal stocks most affected as European markets opened with sharp cuts amid tighter UK curbs and the Brexit impasse.
While Sensex sank by over 1,400 points, Nifty ended below 13,300.
Investors dumped domestic equities on Monday as profit booking gripped the markets. Panic selling, due to the global rout seen in the Asian and European stocks, fretted investors.
At close, the Sensex settled at 45,554 levels, down 1,407 points or 3 percent. The Nifty50 index ended at 13,281 levels, down 479 points or 3.5 percent.
Only sellers were active at the bourses with all the 30 constituents of the Sensex index ending the day in the red. ONGC plunged 9 per cent, while IndusInd Bank and M&M (down 7 percent each), and SBI (down 6 percent) ended the day as the top laggards on the Sensex.
Individually, aviation stocks, InterGlobe Aviation and SpiceJet, sunk up to 10 percent on the BSE after India suspended flights from the UK until December 31 as the country entered a tougher lockdown to fight a new strain of coronavirus.
In New Delhi, Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan said on Monday the government is on alert about the new coronavirus strain in the United Kingdom and asserted that there was no need to panic.
Meanwhile, the Health Ministry’s Joint Monitoring Group discussed the emergence of the mutated variant of the virus, which is reported to be up to 70 percent more infectious.
As more countries barred travel to and from the UK, with others considering similar action to block the new strain sweeping across southern England, India swiftly decided to temporarily suspend all incoming flights from the UK from December 22 to 31. Passengers coming from the UK would be subjected to a mandatory RT-PCR test on arrival at the Indian airports. Italy and South Africa also reported their first new infections.
India reported 24,337 cases in the last 24 hours ending 9 am on Monday. So far, more than 100,56,248 people have been infected with the virus while 1,45,843 have died.
At present, India had 3.03 lakh active cases in the country, while 96,06,111 people recovered from the disease.
