CHENNAI: Madras High Court on Wednesday directed the union and the State governments to file a detailed report by January 5 on steps taken to prevent the spread of new strain of Covid-19, including the institutional quarantine if incoming international passengers.

A vacation Bench of Justices comprising R Mahadevan and Anita Sumanth passed the order on the petition moved by advocate Ramkumar Adityan. According to the petitioner, at present, only the passengers from UK are subjected to mandatory testing and quarantine, to ascertain whether they are infected by the new strain.

Though the new variant was detected in UK, a passenger coming from any other country may have come in contact with someone who visited UK and was infected, he said. The government must ensure all passengers be subjected to RT-PCR test on arrival, he added. The present procedure will not help in tracking asymptomatic passengers, he said. The court, recording the submissions, adjourned the case to January 5.