The consortium is established with generous support and seed funding from Rockefeller Foundation will track the emergence of viral variants correlated to epidemiological dynamics and clinical outcomes.
‘Consortium of four Indian cities to enhance coronavirus genome surveillance in India.’
The consortium is led by CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CSIR-CCMB), Hyderabad, including NCBS-TIFR, InStem-DBT, and NIMHANS in Bengaluru; CSIR-IGIB in New Delhi; Pune Knowledge Cluster, IISER-Pune, and CSIR-NCL in Pune and also works closely with local governments, hospitals, and clinicians.
The team says, “Our aim is to develop strategies and capabilities to identify Variants of Concern before they spread widely and cause outbreaks. This will also help correlate with clinical symptoms and disease severity, potentially associated with emerging variants”.
The aim of this consortium is to develop targeted sampling strategies based on granular epidemiological and clinical data and also focus on building capabilities for real-time surveillance and epidemiology coupled with intense environmental surveillance and advanced computational techniques.
The consortium targets to make this as a national effort by expanding to other strategic locations in India in collaboration with INSACOG.
Source: Medindia
