As Delhi, Haryana and NCR continue to report a spike in Covid-19 cases, Pune’s BJ Medical College (BJMC) and Sassoon General Hospital has been reporting zero new cases among all the Covid-19 tests done since March 10. Sassoon Hospital which also has one of the 21 genome sequencing labs under INSACOG now relies on private labs for positive samples to continue genome sequencing. The hospital has not reported a single positive case in any of its samples since Mach 10. However, to continue with genome sequencing BJ Medical College is procuring samples from private labs.
Dr Rajesh Karyakarte,head of Microbiology department at BJ Medical College said, “Since March 10, we have not reported a single positive sample in our labs. BJ Medical College has been the first one to report on the Delta variant in the country and has been vital when it comes to genome sequencing and also to increase testing in the city. We tested about 200-330 samples in March, which currently has gone down to about 200-100 samples daily. So since the past 40 days we have tested about 8,000 samples and none of the them have tested positive for the Covid-19 infection “
However, Dr Karyakarte added, that since the lab is also part of the Indian SARS-CoV -2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) they have to continue testing the samples and look for new variants if any. “We have to be on the lookout for any new variants and so, to continue that we collect samples from private labs for genome sequencing. Right now we are testing about 100-200 samples daily.”