Nagpur Coronavirus Update: Genome sequencing of five Covid positive samples from Pune city on Thursday revealed that three of them belong to new variant of concern (VoC) XBB.1.16 recombinant Omicron. The study was conducted by NEERI Lab and Center for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD), Hyderabad. Earlier, two VOC cases were reported by NIV Pune through AIIMS Nagpur. The sequencing data of the VoC samples was reported on the Integrated Health Information Portal (IHIP) and the Integrated Disease Surveillance Portal (IDSP). The Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) conducted a survey of VOC patients and is closely monitoring the situation as cases are on the rise. On Thursday, 22 new cases were registered in Nagpur city, in which another spike was registered. This took the district’s Covid tally to 123 in March, crossing the 100 mark in a month for the first time after several months.
Additional Municipal Commissioner Ram Joshi told the media that the state government has issued orders to forward RT-PCR Covid positive samples to Neeri Lab. He said “NEERI was sending samples to Hyderabad and hence NMC started sending samples to AIIMS Nagpur lab. The AIIMS lab sequenced the samples here itself but their results were not updated on the state portal. Thereafter, we returned to the NEERI lab as its data is accessible to the surveillance officers,”. Joshi said that reporting the data to the government is more important than the fact that which lab sequenced the samples.
As of now, there are enough beds in medical colleges
Joshi said that the civic body is on high alert after the detection of VOC patients. “We have restarted the procedures in our hospital in case a patient requires admission. As of now, there are enough beds in the medical colleges,”. Late on Wednesday, the NMC had sent 33 more samples to the NEERI lab. Officials said that if the samples are sequenced by non-INSACOG laboratories, the data is not accessible to the surveillance authorities. He said “INSACOG also recommends uploading of data on IHIP and IDSP portals. Though other labs claimed to have sequenced the Nagpur samples, the results were not visible on these portals,” .
Till yesterday, there were only two sample entries in the portal
NEERI officials said they had received samples two months old and were not suitable for genome sequencing. He said “This is not a retrospective study. Older samples will show variants that were in circulation two months ago. INSACOG has instructed us not to accept samples older than two weeks. Now, we have received new ones. As of tomorrow, the portal I had entries of only two samples”.
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