The Tamil Nadu government on Monday directed non-public hospitals and labs throughout the State to ship COVID-19-positive samples to authorities lab for complete genomic sequencing (WGS) to watch current variants and detect newer variants.

With the spurt in circumstances in nations resembling Japan, the United States of America, Korea, Brazil, and China, it’s important to gear up the WGS of optimistic samples to trace the variants by the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) community, mentioned the Director of Public Health and Preventive Medicine Dr T S Selvavinayagam.

In his newest directive to the non-public hospitals and personal labs authorised for conducting COVID-19 RT-PCR check to ship the samples to the federal government labs for WGS, he mentioned, “Such an exercise will enable timely detection of newer variants, if any, circulating in the country and will facilitate undertaking of requisite public health measures for the same.”

With give attention to 5-fold technique of check, monitor, deal with, vaccination and adherence to COVID-appropriate behaviour, he mentioned Tamil Nadu has been in a position to limit the transmission of the lethal virus and sees about 60 circumstances on a weekly foundation.

He identified that the general public well being problem of coronavirus nonetheless persists all over the world with about 35 lakh circumstances being reported on a weekly foundation. Citing the operational tips for revised surveillance technique for COVID-19 issued by the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry in June 2022 calling for early detection, isolation, testing and well timed administration of suspected and confirmed circumstances to detect and comprise outbreaks of latest SARS-CoV-2 variants, he mentioned monitoring the developments of current variants is essential.

“In this context, we received guidelines from the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to do WGS for positive samples. I request that all samples of COVID-19-positive cases be sent on a daily basis to the State public health laboratory, Chennai, for genomic sequencing,” mentioned Dr Selvaginayagam.

The authorities has appointed a nodal officer for WGS within the cadre of deputy director.

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