हिंदी
SHIMLA JUNE 2, 2021:
A Spokesperson of Health Department said here today that Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) with ten regional genome sequencing laboratories (RGSLs) spread across the country has been constituted for viral genome sequencing in the country. There have been mutations in the Covid-19 virus over the past year or so and these laboratories have been tagged to various states for the purpose of study of the variants of the virus which are in circulation in the country. For the Himachal Pradesh, NCDC Delhi has been tagged as RGSL, he added.
He informed that two kinds of surveillance are being carried out in the Himachal Pradesh for the purpose of genomic sequencing. One of the modalities is Sentinel Surveillance of WGS, wherein instructions have been given to the designated labs to send samples to NCDC Delhi for Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS). The samples sent from tertiary care health facility shall include samples of patients with severe illness/prolonged admission, suspected reinfection, suspected vaccination failure/infection following vaccination, any other special case etc. and should have CT. Under this sentinel surveillance samples are being sent from all the 8 RTPCR labs in the State.
He said that second is the special surveillance whose objective is to gather WGS information in the community by targeting events like clustering of cases, super spreader events, clustering of cases in institutions. The sample of the Covid positive patients who had received the second dose of vaccination irrespective of period after second dose and the cases who had been re-infected with Covid-19 shall also be given priority and the District Surveillance Officers have been asked to identify such samples for further submission to NCDC, Delhi.
He further informed that the State has sent 876 samples for genome sequencing under sentinel and special surveillance till now, out of which results of 146 have been received. Out of these 146, 64 have not reported any mutation, 25 have exhibited some mutation of interest, 40 have been detected positive for UK variant, 16 with double mutation while one sample has been rejected by the NCDC. He said that State is regularly in touch with NCDC authorities and results of the remaining samples sent are awaited and shall be received shortly.
