Excelsior Correspondent
Srinagar, June 26: The Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) today has sought a genome sequencing facility in Kashmir that would detect and track Covid-19 variants.
In a statement issued here, DAK president Dr Nisar ul Hassan said that picking up variants is the key to formulate appropriate and effective health policy that would help prevent and control their spread in the community
“Detecting variants and knowing where and how widely they are spreading could be critical to prevent another deadly wave of Covid-19 like the one we saw earlier,” he said.
Dr Nisar said genome sequencing in a given population can serve as an early warning system to guide the public health response. “It can help in identification of hotspots which is critical to plan targeted public health interventions to control the spread of the disease,” he said.
He said sequencing is imperative to understand how the mutating variants are behaving in terms of infectivity, severity, response to treatment and effectiveness of vaccines.
“If we don’t know the changes in the genetic structure of the virus, we are running blind; fighting a pandemic without doing adequate genome sequencing is almost fighting an unknown enemy,” he said.
The DAK President said Covid-19 tends to mutate as it spreads through the population and mutations can change the behaviour of the virus. “Delta variant, first detected in India last year was responsible for the deadly second wave,” Dr Nisar said.
He said recently a new Delta Plus variant has been detected in at least twelve Indian states including Jammu and Kashmir and it has been designated as a variant of concern as it seems to spread more easily and bind more easily to lung cells.
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