Team Herald
PANJIM: The State government’s plans to have its own virology laboratory to conduct genome sequencing for analysing potential COVID variants in the State are on hold.
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This was confirmed by Dean of Goa Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) Dr Shivanand Bandekar and Director of Directorate of Health Services Dr Jose De Sa.
Dr Bandekar said that the State had plans and had initiated the work to get such a lab functioning in the State but that the same work is on hold following the new protocol guideline that was issued by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
He said that this new protocol was to ensure that such testing is not misused.
However, Dr De Sa allayed any apprehension that this may delay the amount of time it takes for the State to get the results of such tests, which are currently sent to the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune.
He also referred to the ICMR guidelines wherein NIV now has to send the test results immediately and he said that NIV Pune is doing so whenever the State sends samples for testing.
Dr Bandekar added that the State is cautious about the new strain in circulation in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.
It may be recalled that a few months ago, NIV Pune was criticised by the State Health Minister for taking more than two weeks to send back results of samples from Goa, which help the State determine what types of samples are in circulation.
On a different note, Dr De Sa added that the State has managed to considerably bring down the time taken to analyse RT PCR test samples and that lately, only around 200-odd samples are left pending beyond 24 hours but that even these test results came back soon after.
