Delhi’s second genome lab inaugurated at ILBS

New Delhi: The capital’s second state-of-the-art genome sequencing facility was inaugurated at Institute of Liver and Biliary Services (ILBS) by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday. The first such facility was opened at Lok Nayak Hospital a day earlier. Both facilities will end Delhi’s dependence on National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to get samples tested. Genome sequencing is important as new variants and mutations of Covid-19 have been emerging frequently.

“The first set of results will come in 4-5 days. The ILBS facility is more advanced that the one at Lok Nayak Hospital. Till now, we were dependent on NCDC and other labs of the central government. Now, we will be able to identify and analyse all Covid-19 variants for any future waves and enable Delhi government to make strategies and advance preparations to avert deaths and infection,” said Kejriwal.

The ILBS facility would be able to sequence nearly all 30,000 molecules of SARS CoV2 with the help of the latest machines called NextSeq and MiSeq. This will help find mutations in any part of the virus, not merely the spike protein area. The ILBS facility can sequence more than 300 samples every week and give results within 5-7 days. The sequencing done with clinical significance would help in classification of new strains or variants circulating in Delhi-NCR.

Later, Kejriwal tweeted that the labs would help in identification and detection of the severity of any new variant of the virus and Delhiites would benefit a lot from this technology.

Explaining the genome sequencing process, Dr Shiv Kumar Sarin, director of ILBS, said, “After RT-PCR tests, we will preserve the RNA and sequence the virus. This will help us decide whether the variant is new or an existing one. Not every strain is extremely dangerous, but we need to be well informed about the new cases coming to Delhi and their variants.”