District Correspondent : Two people who returned from India have been diagnosed with the highly contagious Indian COVID-19 variant.

The disclosure was made on Saturday afternoon after doing their sample sequencing at the genome center of Jashore University of Science and Technology (JUST).

JUST Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Md Anwar Hossain, and its genome center assistant director and Microbiology dept chairman Prof Dr Iqbal Kabir Zahid confirmed the matter.

VC Anwar said they informed the Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control And Research (IEDCR) about the detection.

For the last some days, India has been witnessing an alarming rise in coronavirus cases and deaths, with the country reported over 4 lakh fresh infections, and 4,187 new fatalities in the last 24 hours.

In a bid to preventing the spread of the Indian strain to Bangladesh, the country closed its border with the neighbouring one for 14 days starting from April 26.