Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh says, more than one lakh SARS-CoV-2 genomes sequenced till November 2021 for COVID-19

Minister also informs that a large number of COVID-19 Bio-repositories and samples were made available to academia and industry for product development

Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology; Minister of State (Independent Charge) Earth Sciences; MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh said that more than one lakh SARS-CoV-2 genomes sequenced till November 2021 for COVID-19.

In a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha today, the Minister informed that the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) being coordinated by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), as on 25^th November 2021 has sequenced 1,02,880 SARS-CoV-2 genomes.

A total of 17 COVID-19 Bio-repositories have been notified by the Government of India on 23-05-2020. These are set up at laboratories of Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

On the question of the number of COVID-19 Bio-repositories and samples that were made available to academia and industry for product development, the Minister gave the following details:

DBT funded Biorepository at ILBS, New Delhi has shared 1299 samples with academia.  ILS, Bhubaneswar has provided samples from the biorepository to 18 research and development projects. NCCS, Pune has shared a total of 124 samples so far with academia and industry. InSTEM, Bangalore has shared a total of 363 samples so far with academia and industry.  NCR Biotech Science Cluster Translational Health Science and Technology Institute & Regional Centre for Biotechnology, Faridabad have shared a total of 20890 samples so far with academia and industry.

CSIR-CCMB shared about 200 samples with incubatees at CCMB- Atal Incubation Centre for development of interferometry antibody detection, 200 samples for development of in house Elisa based assays, and about 250 samples were shared for development of RT-PCR assays. Samples have also been utilized for testing and validating technologies/ products developed by industries.  CSIR-IGIB Bio-repository has been used to help testing and validation of diagnostic products. CSIR-IMTECH made available 15 samples for academic research in IMTECH and 30 samples were shared with PGIMER, Chandigarh for quality control analysis of RT-PCR testing.