New Delhi: The Union Health Ministry on Friday said that the Indian SARA-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) has so far sequenced 84,386 Voice of Concern (VoC) and 5606 Voice of Interest (VoI) of Covid19 variants across the country.
Giving details of different variants, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya told in the Lok Sabha that different VoC like Alpha (4265), Beta (220), Gamma (3), Delta (42571), Delta Plus (19967), and Omicron (17360) has been found till date in India.
Similarly, different VoI including Kappa (5603) and Eta-B.1.525 (3) have been sequenced in the country.
The INSACOG is a consortium of 52 laboratories to monitor the genomic variations in the SARS-CoV-2.
INSACOG is a multi-laboratory, multi-agency, pan India network to monitor genomic variations in the SARS-CoV-2 by a sentinel sequencing effort which is facilitated by the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) involving the central surveillance unit (CSU) under Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDPs).
"For the sentinel surveillance, nearly 300 sentinel sites are identified to send samples to the regional sequencing labs through the integrated disease surveillance program network," Mandaviya said.
The network carries out whole-genome sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 to identify existing VoC, VoI, and new mutations and variants which could help in the understanding of the correlation of genomic variants with how the virus spreads, disease severity and provide information for public health response.
Meanwhile, Mandaviya said that as of February 7, an expenditure of Rs 27,945.14 crore has been incurred against the 2021-22 budgetary allocation of Rs 35,000 cross for procuring vaccines to supply free of cost to States and UTs.
As per government statistics, a total of 12,30,40,550 Covid19 vaccines have been supplied to States and UTs from January 2021 till February this year. The vaccines include 10,50,91,710 Covishield and 1,79, 48,840 Covaxin. Uttar Pradesh has been provided with the maximum number of Covaxin doses (4,38,50,615) and 22,32,48,370 Covishield doses followed by Maharashtra, 12,08,34,980 Covishield and 2,29,67,010 Covaxin doses.
