Covid-19 crisis: Here's all you need to know about top virologist Shahid Jameel

The Insacog chief resigned from his post days after questioning how the pandemic was being handled in India

Noted virologist Shahid Jameel resigned as the chairman of the Indian SARS-COV-2 Genomics Consortia (Insacog), the scientific advisory group tasked with advising the country’s genome mapping, days after criticising the way the government was dealing with the pandemic.

Jameel confirmed his resignation to multiple media outlets, but declined to state the reason for his exit. Insacog had been established in January this year, with Jameel as its head, to pick up the pace of genome sequencing of the Covid-19 virus and its variants in the country, managing a network of 10 laboratories for the task.

Just last week, Jameel penned an opinion piece published by The New York Times, where he flagged various issues with India's Covid-19 response, honing in on reduced testing, a sluggish vaccination drive, vaccine shortage and the need to expand the healthcare workforce. He wrote that the measures are widely agreed upon by scientists in the country but they were facing “stubborn resistance to evidence-based policymaking.”

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The internationally-acclaimed virologist holds the position of director at the Ashoka University’s school of biosciences, where his work centres on synthetic biology, infectious diseases and chronic diseases. Jameel spent 25 years prior to that researching human viruses at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology.

Much of Jameel’s work has been focused on studying viruses, his early work concentrating on the hepatitis B virus, and later turning towards studying hepatitis E and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). He is known to have identified the characteristics of these viruses and their routes of transmission, which helped in the development of diagnostic and preventive protocols.

Jameel had also spearheaded the group that worked on developing vaccines for the HIV-1 subtype C, the most dominant form of the infection in India.

As one of the most respected names in virology in the country, Jameel is an elected member of all three of India’s major science academies — National Academy of Sciences India, Indian Academy of Sciences and Indian National Science Academy. The government of India awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of India’s highest awards in the field of medical science.