'No significant mutation of Covid in India'

September 20, 2020 18:53

No significant or drastic mutation in strains of SARS-CoV-2 has been found in India till now, Union Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Sunday during an interaction with his social media followers.

He also said the Indian Council of Medical Research has been conducting large-scale sequencing of nationally representative strains collected over a few months and detailed results on mutations of the virus will be available in early October.

Replying to queries during the 'Sunday Samvad' platform, Vardhan further said enough oxygen is being produced in the country and the health ministry is closely monitoring the situation.

He took the occasion to remind everyone that the ministry had dispatched oxygen concentrators to the rural parts of the country specifically to avert the logistic issues coming to light, a health ministry statement said.

On the recent saliva-based test for COVID-19, Vardhan noted that ICMR has validated a few tests, but no reliable test has been found and companies with tests approved by US-FDA have still not approached the Government of India.

The minister added that ICMR is actively exploring this test method and will inform as soon as reliable options are available, the statement said.

To a question regarding the Centre's achievement of engineering polio eradication in India, he reminded the audience that coronavirus is a novel pathogen and unlike polio, literature is absent on it.

India's handling of outbreaks in the past such as SARS, Ebola and Plague will play a major role in containing coronavirus, Vardhan said.

-- PTI

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