11.10 am: India decides to extend the suspension of flights to the UK till January 7. “Strictly regulated resumption will take place” after that, Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri announces.

11 am: In Telangana, 279 people have not yet been traced, while in Uttar Pradesh, as many as 568 people have not yet been traced.

In states such as Tamil Nadu and Uttarakhand, most returnees have been traced, officials said.

In Odisha, 27 of 181 UK returneed are yet to be traced.

10.59 am: Of the 2,406 people who returned to Karnataka, about 570 are missing, Karnataka Medical Education Minister Dr K Sudhakar says, according to the Hindustan Times. “I have been promised that within 48 hours all of them will be traced,” Sudhakar says. “Of the 570 missing passengers, 204 have given addresses in Bengaluru.”

10.55 am: Several states are struggling to track people who returned from the United Kingdom as many of them have provided either wrong or vague addresses. Between November 25 and December 23, about 33,000 passengers returned to India from the UK, the health ministry has said, according to the Hindustan Times.

Of this, about 3,500 people went to Punjab, 2,400 to Karnataka, 2,200 to Tamil Nadu, 1,655 to Uttar Pradesh and 1,100 to Telangana.

Punjab has not yet finished contact tracing.

9.34 am: India’s coronavirus tally rises to 1,02,44,852 after 20,549 new cases emerge in 24 hours, according to the Union health ministry. The country’s toll climbs by 286 to 1,48,439. There are 2,62,272 active cases, and 98,34,141 people have recovered from the disease so far.

8.57 am: United States reports its first case of the new mutant strain of the coronavirus, after a man in Colorado who has no travel history, tested positive, reports AP. The Colorado State Laboratory confirmed the virus variant, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was notified.

8.56 am: Singapore becomes the first Asian country to start vaccinating healthcare workers against Covid-19 with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, reports PTI.

8.54 am: A total of 20 people in India have tested positive for the more contagious and genetically distinct variant of the coronavirus that was first discovered in Britain, say multiple reports. The tally was based on the results of genome sequencing of positive samples released by the Indian Sars-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (Insacog) labs, according to the Hindustan Times.

8.50 am: United States Vice President-elect Kamala Harris received the first dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine live on television in Washington DC, and urged Americans to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, reports CNN. “That was easy,” Harris said after receiving the shot in her left arm. “Thank you. I barely felt it.”

8.45 am: Here are the top updates from Tuesday: