Nayagarh,(Baghuabarta): In a boost to the Centre’s project that detects new and emerging Covid variants, at least five private laboratories have joined the network of 28 government laboratories involved in the task. Sujeet Kumar Singh, director with the National Centre for Disease Control which leads the consortium, told this newspaper that the private laboratories that fulfil the specifications listed by the Department of Biotechnology were approved to join the network. Beginning with 10 national research laboratories that came together in view of the B1617 variant of Covid, the INSACOG project went on to add 18 more regional laboratories over the past few months. While nearly 60,000 samples were subjected to whole genome sequencing till September, nearly 7,000 samples per month, the government plans to further enhance the capacity to 70,000 samples.






