Kolkata: One of the two bengal institutions that can track mutants or variants of the SARS-COV-2 virus have run out of reagents and are expected to continue the sequencing activities of the genome next week when supply continues.
The sequencing work has stopped in the Scientific Council Laboratory and the Indian Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (CSIR-IICB) industry for about three weeks now.
The last sample tested was on December 24.
The lab in Salt Lake, however, hopes to get a supply of reagent on Monday.
“We want to continue our genome sequencing activities as early as possible.
Hopefully, reagents must reach us in the next few days that allow us to continue our work at the beginning of next week.
Sequencing genomes have become increasingly important so we can keep an eye on variants or mutants from Virus, “said Director of CSIR-IICB Arun Bandyopadhyay.
IICB, who has made a genome sequencing from the beginning of the pandemic for academic purposes, has recently been taken under the Insacog (Indian Genomic Consortium of SARS-COV-2) to increase the sequence for supervision due to the number of samples that need to be analyzed.
The laboratory can run 100 smaples in 48 hours.
The National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBGM) in Kalyani, the Nodal Unit for Genome sequencing in East India, is part of the consortium from the start.
Nibmg Kalyani was under a big pressure last month when the Bengal government decided to seize all covid positive samples that had a CT value in 30 to determine whether Omicron had spread in the community.
The Ministry of Health then began sending samples to IICB through tropical medical schools.
At present around 100 of these samples are waiting to be sorted.