Mumbai: When the chairman of the Minister of UDDHAV Thackeray e-predicted all the laboratory of the order of the first genome of the city, he limited the efforts of three months entered by a group of doctors who graduated from the 100-year-old Nair-managed Nair Hospital.
At the inauguration, Thackeray said the new lab at the Nair Affiliate Kastba Hospital in Chinchpokli would help quickly find mutations in Coronavirus, so as to strengthen Covid battles.
The need for the lab as it felt during the second covid wave when the new variant, Delta, was found in Vidarbha only during the peak; Previous detection can help examine the spread.
Additional Commissioner Suresh Kakani said BMC was in the process of choosing 384 samples to start the first half of the sequencing in the next few days.
“We have chosen four categories of covid patients – those in hospitals for a long time, those who live in areas with more cases, samples that have died and those who have a history of foreign trips,” Kakani said.
As testing each sample will cost around RS 10,000, BMC is being careful in taking samples.
Dr.
Jayanti Shastri, who heads the Microbiology Department of the Nair Hospital and is responsible for the BMC Genome Laboratory, said: “We got two machines as a donation from US company Illumina for Rs 6.4 Crore.
This is the latest technology available in the world.” Rs The other 4 Crores were appointed by ATE Chandra Foundation from donors such as the Gate and Godrej foundation.
Thackeray, who also marked the Centenary Celebration of the Nair Hospital, said BMC established a lab without imposing financial burdens to the government but through the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds.
Nair Hospital Alumni stepped up to regulate CSR funds.
“Our alumni in Mumbai decided to do something about the fact that the city did not have a genome laboratory.
We contacted one of our alumnus at Harvard Medical School, Dr.
Mehul Mehta, who contacted Illumina about donations,” said Dr.
Arshad Ghulam Mohammed from the home alumni association Naire pain.
The company agreed, and the documents were completed between May 11 and June 4, but the lack of cargo flights delayed the arrival of machines from Singapore more than a month.
So far, samples from Mumbai are sent to the Insacog Center initiative, but the results are always delayed.
Meanwhile, the country is tied with the Institute of Genomic and Integrative Biology Lab Csir, Delhi, and BMC conducting a pilot study with IIT Bombay.