Alarm In Jharkhand After Multiple Covid Variants Detected

Jharkhand government has directed authorities to despatch samples within 48 hours of a patient's death for a genetic study, a top official said.

Alarmed by the detection of several variants of coronavirus in Jharkhand with 328 confirmed cases surfacing so far, the state government has directed the authorities to despatch samples within 48 hours of a patient's death for conducting a genetic study to understand the mortality rate and evolve a strategy to contain the spread, a top official said today. Battling the second wave of the COVID-19 that has claimed 5,100 lives in Jharkhand, the state government is concerned as these variants like Delta, Alpha, and Kappa are said to be more transmissible. "As many as 328 of the 364 samples have tested positive for variants like Delta, Alpha, and Kappa in the state in the course of whole genome sequencing," State Health Secretary, Arun Kumar Singh told PTI. Whole genome sequencing (WGS) is a laboratory process that is used to determine nearly all the approximately 3 billion nucleotides of an individual's complete DNA sequence, including non-coding sequence which is instrumental in characterising the mutations and tracking disease outbreaks.