Covid-19 has claimed three more lives in Meghalaya during the past 24 hours, taking the total death toll to 138 in the state.

The state has recorded a drop in new cases with only two persons testing positive for Covid-19 on Saturday.

An official of the Meghalaya healthy department said, “The number of new Covid-19 cases are gradually declining and only two persons have tested positive in the past 24 hours.”

The total number of Covid-19 cases in Meghalaya reached 13,371.

The number of active cases is 248 and a total of 12,985 people have recovered from the disease so far in the state.

Meanwhile, the Meghalaya government has prohibited the entry of tourists from the UK into the state in view of a new mutant strain of the novel coronavirus emerging in the country.

The government also directed all UK returnees who have returned to Meghalaya during the past four weeks to undergo tests for Covid-19 and furnish their travel history of the past 14 days to surveillance units in their respective districts.

Health and Family Welfare Department in Meghalaya has asked all the UK returnees or entrants in the past 4 weeks (November 25 to December 23) to declare their travel history of the past 14 days to the Surveillance Units in their respective districts and undergo RT-PCR test.

The Meghalaya government would isolate those testing positive in separate isolation units and send their samples to the Pune based National Institute of Virology to confirm if they have been infected by the new mutant virus strain.