Gurgaon: Given the threat of a highly contagious Omicron variant of Covid-19, the state government on Thursday made the operational of the genome sequential laboratory at Maharshi Dayanand University in Rohtak, the first facility in Haryana.
This will accelerate Sentinel supervision – monitor the level of the occurrence of variants – in the state as a random covid sample does not need to be sent to Delhi now for the genome sequencing, the health department official said.
The lab has the capacity of processing 92 samples in one go (four hours) and will take three days to declare results.
However, samples that come to Haryana, however, will remain sent to the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Delhi because the lab only has one genome sequencing machine at this time.
Dhruv Chaudhary, The Nodal Officer for Covid-19 in Haryana, said the sequencing genome is a method of finding out the nucleotide sequence of a DNA organism.
This helps in understanding how genes work together to direct growth, development and maintenance, he added.
The laboratory will process sentinel supervision samples carried out by the state.
“Each district sends a sample of 2% of Covid’s positive cases to Rohtak.
This sample is used to be sent to Delhi for genome sequencing, which will now be processed here.
At present, we have been able to buy only one machine.
So, we will continue Sending samples of foreign tourists to Delhi, “said Chaudhary.
Haryana has sent 300 samples every month to Delhi to sort the genome since the end of the second wave of Covid.