Genomic surveillance committee to focus on severe Covid patients, breakthrough infections

The eight-member genomic surveillance committee, set up by the State Government on June 9, will soon hold its first meeting and four priority patient groups for genomic sequencing of Covid samples have already been identified according to the members of the committee.

Details regarding these priority patient groups were discussed during a recent briefing with Deputy Chief Minister Dr C N Ashwath Narayan by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences' (RGUHS) clinical committee. These will be put forward in the committee's first internal meeting.

A member of the committee told DH, "The genomic surveillance team is looking at focussing on ICU surveillance because that is where deaths are, so accelerating contact tracing for strains found in ICU patients can be done, to investigate where it is coming from, and identify the index patient."

"The second priority is vaccinating people who are still getting infected (breakthrough infections). This will give us an idea of vaccine efficiency and vaccine escape mutations."

"The third priority is children and the fourth focus group is patients who require high flow oxygen. We also believe the Delta variant (B.1.617.2) of the SARS-CoV-2 virus had a strong role to play in fungal infections. We will be investigating if there's a link," the committee member said.

Virologist Dr V Ravi, chairman of the Genomic Surveillance Committee, said, "The State is planning to expand genomic sequencing for its future. So, this committee has been set up to guide the State. Outside INSACOG (Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomic Consortia) also, there are sequencing efforts going on, so we will be looking at data generated from those efforts too."

"As per INSACOG guidelines, samples from international travellers, super spreading events, any disease severity phenotype noticed in the population, breakthrough infections and paediatric cases have to be sequenced," he said.

The committee member quoted above, requesting anonymity said, "Karnataka, so far, has sequenced only 1,600 Covid samples, which was mostly done for academic purposes rather than to direct public health response or policy. In December last year, the State detected the Delta variant which we now have 244 cases of, but our public health response to this was mounted only on April 26."

"There is a lag in the way we are responding, when most countries are looking at genomic surveillance instead of clinical aftermath to respond. That is why there is a need for real time sequencing," he said.

3,000 samples should be sequenced a week

According to the Genomic Evolution Analysis Resource for Covid-19 (GEAR-19) maintained by the Bioinformatics Center at Council of Scientific and Industrial Research - Centre For Cellular And Molecular Biology (BIC, CSIR-CCMB), there are 8,572 variants catalogued in 28 States, "and every three months at least one variant of concern which can have the potential to reduce vaccine efficiency is coming up globally. We should be sequencing at least 3,000 samples a week," said the genomic surveillance State committee member.

Check out DH latest videos: