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INSACOG (Indian SARS Cov2 genomic consortium) is planning to increase more sites for sewage sample collection of Covid-19, said NTAGI Chairman Dr N K Arora on Monday. Currently, INSACOG is looking into the results of samples collected from 15 states and 19 sewage sites.
"We are already looking at the results. The results are being viewed for the last two weeks and almost 15 states have at least one site or so. We are going to further streamline it in the coming weeks or a month or so," Dr Arora told ANI adding that the INSACOG is further going to increase the sites for the sewage sample collection.
"We'll try to see just like polio, we have over 50 sites similarly for COVID-19, we will increase the number of sites so that the whole country is represented in that," said NTAGI Chairman.
"We have started analysing the gutter fluid for viruses despite the number of fewer cases, if there is any new variant coming up, it will be picked up from that because a lot of patients, a lot of people are asymptomatic, but they excrete the virus into the country."
Several experts had earlier highlighted that environmental surveillance is an important indicator for the virus. Dr Priya Abraham, Director, ICMR-NIV, Pune told ANI, "One environmental surveillance which people are doing is actually the sewage water sampling, which is like an indirect indicator that a particular area from where that sewage water is being drained from still has COVID-19 activity. So that's one way to do environmental monitoring or surveillance."
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