{"id":131587,"date":"2021-09-04T20:46:11","date_gmt":"2021-09-04T15:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=131587"},"modified":"2021-09-06T18:30:05","modified_gmt":"2021-09-06T13:00:05","slug":"what-ails-indias-coronavirus-genome-sequencing-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/what-ails-indias-coronavirus-genome-sequencing-system\/","title":{"rendered":"What ails India\u2019s coronavirus genome sequencing system"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Synopsis:\u00a0<\/span><\/b>Sequencing and analysis of the novel coronavirus, a crucial step in infection containment strategy, declined sharply in India, even as cases of the resultant disease continued to rise.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Introduction<\/b><\/h5>\n

India formed the\u00a0<\/span>Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics<\/span><\/b> (INSACOG), a consortium of 10 genome sequencing labs, in December 2020 to boost efforts for genome sequencing. The number of labs involved in coronavirus sequencing since then has gone up to 28.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite government efforts, the number of coronavirus samples sequenced and analysed in the country went down by 76%<\/strong> in July. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Must Read<\/strong>: What is genomic sequencing?<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Whereas, the United Kingdom and the United States have sequenced and shared data for 866,000 and 755,000 samples already, according to GISAID, a global, open-access online repository of genomic data. India has sequenced only 82,000 samples, a meagre 0.2% <\/strong>of its cumulative cases. <\/span><\/p>\n

More than 100 countries have sequenced a greater share of samples than India.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Must read:<\/strong> How Genome sequencing works?<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
How new guidelines hampered the process of sequencing and analysis of the novel coronavirus?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n

Initial guidelines from the central government aimed to analyse 5% of all positive samples from each state. This method is known as <\/span>\u2018randomised surveillance\u2019.<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However,\u00a0four months later, the government decided to change the policy. Only\u00a0300 samples\u00a0were decided to\u00a0be sent from every state to genome sequencing labs every month. This is called\u00a0<\/span>\u2018sentinel site surveillance’.<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The government justified the move, saying, as cases were rising exponentially at that time, a 5% sequencing would put a lot of load on the sequencing labs. Further, the revision was according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) standards for genome sequencing.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What is the WHO\u2019s recommendation\u00a0in this regard?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n

WHO never discouraged\u00a0<\/span>random surveillance<\/span><\/b>\u00a0and even said it is the more sensitive\u00a0method.\u00a0WHO has suggested\u00a0Sentinel<\/span>\u00a0surveillance\u00a0<\/span><\/b>to be adopted by countries that have \u2018minimal lab capacity’. Further, WHO had outrightly said that Sentinel surveillance might not be the best representation, contrary to what the government claimed.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What issues and challenges are faced by India\u2019s coronavirus genome sequencing system?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n

Firstly,<\/strong>\u00a0only two states (Maharashtra and Kerala) have genome sequencing facilities of their own. The rest of the country has to send samples to INSACOG labs run by the Centre.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Secondly,\u00a0<\/strong>it is difficult for a country as big as India to sequence a greater number of samples due to a high caseload.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Thirdly,<\/strong> according to\u00a0scientists working at an INSACOG lab,<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/b>many\u00a0labs, do not get an adequate number of quality samples either in time or with scientific parameters intact.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fourthly<\/strong>, India has a long turnaround time. The UK with 410,000 sequences had uploaded raw data within 16 days on an average. Whereas, India takes about 57 days.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why the sequencing data needs to be in the public domain?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n

The WHO has informed that the data of any sequencing done anywhere in the world should be submitted to open-access platforms like GISAID. This will allow a sequence done in one part of the world to be looked at by the global scientific community. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If sequences are not shared in the public domain timely, it may defeat the purpose of sequencing<\/strong> because, by the time the sequence is uploaded, it would have undergone several mutations.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Also, a\u00a0scientist outside the government setup will not be able to see the nature or location of mutations in the genome sequence of the virus unless raw data is posted.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:<\/span><\/b>\u00a0This post is based on the article \u201c<\/span>What ails India\u2019s coronavirus genome sequencing system<\/span><\/b>\u201c published in\u00a0<\/span>Down to Earth<\/span><\/b>\u00a0on\u00a0<\/span>4<\/span><\/b>th<\/span><\/b>\u00a0September<\/span><\/b>\u00a02021.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Synopsis:\u00a0Sequencing and analysis of the novel coronavirus, a crucial step in infection containment strategy, declined sharply in India, even as cases of the resultant disease continued to rise.\u00a0\u00a0 Introduction India formed the\u00a0Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics (INSACOG), a consortium of 10 genome sequencing labs, in December 2020 to boost efforts for genome sequencing. The… Continue reading What ails India\u2019s coronavirus genome sequencing system<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10328,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[9535,9536,2338,216],"class_list":["post-131587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-bitechnology","tag-genes","tag-genome-sequencing","tag-gs-paper-3","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704930033},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10328"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}