The government has denied that there has been a decline in genome sequencing and evaluation of the novel coronavirus in the nation.
Genome sequencing is becoming carried out by the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics (INSACOG), a consortium of 28 labs. INSACOG had sequenced 16,681 samples in April, 14,112 in May, 11,624 in June and 10,202 in July, the government stated, responding to reports of a decline in sequencing.
“The [number of] samples sequenced by labs of INSACOG consortium also depends on the samples sent by the respective states,” the government stated.
According to the government, the initial aspect sequencing of samples by INSACOG labs was aimed at detecting the ‘variants of concern’ (VOC) amongst incoming international travellers and to see if any particular person with VOC has entered the nation in the preceding month. To detect the presence of VOC inside the nation, only 5% of the RT-PCR positive instances had been targeted for sequencing. Both objectives had been accomplished by January-finish.
States like Maharashtra, Punjab and Delhi began displaying increasing trends in February and therefore sequencing was improved in quite a few districts of Maharashtra and 10 districts of Punjab.
Sentinel surveillance made sure samples from each and every state had been geographically nicely-represented as the 5% of random sampling tactic resulted in samples from particular districts becoming more than-represented, when some districts remained unrepresented, the government stated. “With the decrease in positivity, the sample availability from the sentinel sites catering to districts with zero or single-digit weekly new cases has also gone down. Currently, over 86 districts in the country have zero weekly new cases,” the government stated.
For the previous one month, a majority of the new instances are from only two states: Kerala and Maharashtra. At present, of the 45,000 new instances, more than 32,000 instances are from Kerala and more than 4,000 instances from Maharashtra, which indicates that 80% instances are from the two states. Only 9,000 instances, or about 20%, are from the remaining states. This is also reflected in the samples sequenced from numerous states.
The government stated that because July, information concerning samples and final results had been becoming shared via the Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP). Details and final results of 9,066 samples had been sent in July and 6,969 samples in August by means of the IHIP, the government stated.