On Monday, Minister of Health Harsh Vardhana said the variant B1.617, identified as the ‘variant of concern’ by the World Health Organization (WHO), for coronavirus disease (Covid-19) has now become the country’s dominant. Vardhan spoke at the Covid-19 meeting of the 27th Ministerial Group (GoM).
“When we talk about genome sequencing, over 25,739 samples have been sequenced by INSACOG and 9,508 were found with variants of concern. Out of these, B.1.617 variant was found in almost 65 per cent of the samples making it one of the most common variants,” said Vardhan.
The INSACOG consortium consists of 10 institutes in the Center that participate in Sars-CoV-2 genome sequence.
The Minister of Health also stated that government governments were asked to regularly send samples for genome sequencing.
Vardhan also pointed out that despite the fact that Covid-19 was tested on Sunday, on 23 May, more than 19 lakh samples took the cumulatives across the country beyond 33 crore.
