Lack of funds to buy reagents has forced the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) to stop next generation sequencing (NGS), amid all the buzz around Omicron, the new Covid-19 variant, and steps being taken to contain its spread.
Delhi, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka are among some Indian states to have reported the deadly variant, believed to be virulent in nature.
Bihar has not reported any Covid-19 case of the new variant so far, as it awaits genomic sequencing results of four Covid-19 positive patients, having international travel history, said health officials.
Their samples have been sent to the National Centre for Disease Control, New Delhi, the nearest mapped Indian SARS-CoV-2 genomics consortium (INSACOG) laboratory for genomic sequencing to ascertain the strain of the Covid-19 virus.
The IGIMS is the only institute in Bihar to be part of the INSACOG, comprising 28 national laboratories, to monitor the genomic variations in the SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the pandemic. The institute stopped NGS amid shortage of funds to buy reagents, after having tested one sample in the last week of November that was found positive for the Delta variant, said doctors at the institute requesting anonymity.
The 53-year-old patient had a travel history of United Kingdom. He had gone to attend a marriage ceremony in Motihari town of East Champaran district, where he fell ill and was admitted to a private hospital in Patna.
Prior to this, the institute had done trial run of two archived samples of the second wave (April to June), which tested positive for the Delta variant, the doctor quoted above said.
Sources at the institute said the reagents for NGS were costly. It cost ₹15 lakh (approx.) for one run of the machine. A maximum of 96 samples could be accommodated in one run. It generally took a minimum of 10 days to get the test result, which involved multiple tests. The machine aborts the sample if, at any stage, the quality of the test was not up to the mark. In such event, one had to re-run the entire process, leading to delay in getting the precise result, said a microbiologist at the institute.
Officials at State Health Society, Bihar, said funds for purchase of NGS reagents were on way, after the IGIMS made a formal request for it on December 7.
“Based on information of travellers from “at risk” countries on the Air-Suvidha portal of the government of India, as many as 957 of the 1,200-odd samples of international travellers collected from the last week of November have tested negative, while four are positive. The samples have been sent for genomic sequencing. Results of the remaining 239-odd samples are awaited,” executive director of the State Health Society, Sanjay Kumar Singh, said on Tuesday.
