Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh on Tuesday asked the Centre to offer Covid-19 vaccines to younger people after a fast-spreading UK coronavirus variant was found in four-fifths of viral genomes sampled from the state this month.

Singh has called on people to strictly adhere to personal safety protocols and urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to widen the vaccination campaign to cover those younger than 60 years as the variant has been found in younger people, the state said in a media release.

The detection of the UK variant — also known as B.1.1.7 — that is known to be more infectious than earlier circulating coronaviruses, has amplified concerns that variants might be fuelling the Covid-19 resurgence in Punjab and other states.

The state said 326 (81 per cent) of 401 samples collected between March 1 and 10 and sequenced at the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), New Delhi, contained B.1.1.7.

Singh has warned that the state would impose fresh curbs and restrictions if people do not follow precautions.

Punjab is among multiple states across India where average daily new case counts have increased over the past three weeks, more than doubling the country’s daily count from around 15,000 on March 1 to more than 40,000 on March 22.

In Punjab, average daily case count has increased nearly four-fold from 566 to 2,262 over the past three weeks, marking the state’s third Covid-19 wave after the first wave and peak in mid-September and the second in mid-November.

The UK variant has mutations that make it more infectious and a fast spreader.

Studies have indicated that it accounts for 98 per cent of new cases in the UK and 90 per cent of new cases in Spain.

The NCDC, a unit of the Union health ministry, and nine partner labs across the country have since December been sequencing coronavirus genomes from samples across the country to look for unusual variants that might influence epidemic patterns.

This effort has so far detected 795 samples with the UK variant or one of the other two variants of concern called the South Africa and Brazil variants, the health ministry said on Tuesday.

The ministry did not respond to queries seeking statewise distribution of these 795 variants.

The sequencing efforts by the NCDC in collaboration with labs in New Delhi and Pune have also revealed the presence of a coronavirus variant with a double mutation — designated E484Q and L452R — among nearly 20 per cent of samples from Maharashtra, another state with a surge in counts.

Researchers are currently trying to collect more samples and sequence more genomes and correlate them with infection patterns to determine whether this double mutation variant has played any role in the sharp rise in cases in Maharashtra in recent weeks.