Secretaries panel may meet today to review plan to tackle XE threat
While India is yet to report a case of the XE variant - there were reports of a case in Mumbai but the government has denied it - experts said now is not the time to let the guard down. "Global collaboration in strengthening surveillance and conti...
The government is working to expand monitoring of sewage load to detect the spread of Covid-19.
The empowered group of secretaries set up to monitor and coordinate activities and response to contain the spread of Covid-19 is likely to meet on Friday amid looming threat of the XE variant, a highly transmissible subvariant of Omicron. "The group will review the situation and discuss how to reposition the surveillance in a manner that it becomes more sensitive so that the virus can be picked up at an initial stage," a person in the know told ET. Another person said, "The empowered group is going to discuss future strategies to ensure that things remain under control."
While India is yet to report a case of the XE variant - there were reports of a case in Mumbai but the government has denied it - experts said now is not the time to let the guard down. "Global collaboration in strengthening surveillance and continuing to monitor the trajectory of the virus is important," said Giridhara Babu, a senior epidemiologist.
The government is working to expand monitoring of sewage load to detect the spread of Covid-19.
"A wastewater surveillance programme can help in predicting the spread of Covid," a person in the know said. The department of biotechnology has drawn up a detailed sewage surveillance plan to be rolled out through the Indian Sars-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (Insacog), a network of 35 genome sequencing laboratories.
