BENGALURU: The coronavirus genome surveillance report has shown that 100-plus variants were identified from the start of research in July 2021 until now. Dr Ramesh Hariharan, CEO & Co-Founder, Strand Life Sciences, said they contributed 38 per cent of the samples submitted from Karnataka to major public databases.
He said they had the opportunity to spot the emergence of the Delta strain at least a month before it caused its tragic mayhem. Since then, they have been tracking the virus closely and providing timely information to the Karnataka government and BBMP.
Minister for Higher Education, IT & BT Dr CN Ashwath Narayan, inaugurating the event, said a vital component of managing public health is keeping up with virus mutations and lineages, and added that active measures have been taken to encourage genomic sequencing to enable detection of new variants. He explained that surveillance helped in giving the right care to patients and bringing the pandemic under control. The process cost Rs 5,000 per sample.
The government and other organisations extended support, and six units were established across the state. A total of 12,800 RT-PCR COVID samples were sequenced at Strand Life Sciences from July 2021 until now. These samples were collected from various wards across Karnataka, with the focus on Bengaluru.