Insacog to review plan on genome sequencing

Insacog, the national consortium of government institutions involved in genome sequencing of the coronavirus, will hold a meeting on Friday to review its strategy in the wake of the country detecting its first two cases of Omicron variant on Thursday.

"It's an evolving situation and the experts will see if more needs to be done to ensure that situation is handled well," one of the members of the Indian Sars-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (Insacog) told ET.

Another member said all samples lifted in November will be sequenced on priority. "By next week the results of all these samples should come," he said. Karnataka is likely to be asked to lift more samples for sequencing as the first two cases of heavily mutated Omicron variant have been detected in the state, the person said.


"In the last few weeks, some parts of Karnataka have seen an outbreak," he said. "Those areas will have to be taken into consideration for genome sequencing."