Mumbai’s Kasturba Hospital likely to start tests to detect variants next week

The Kasturba Gandhi hospital in Chinchpokli installed genome sequencing machines in their laboratory on Tuesday. The hospital will begin conducting tests to identify variants of Sars-Cov-2 – the virus that causes Covid-19 – from next week, making it the first civic-run hospital to conduct whole genome sequencing in Mumbai.

The high speed machine can run tests on 380 samples per round. The civic body will incur a cost of ₹10,000 for testing each sample. The machines will be inaugurated by chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on Wednesday.

Genome sequencing is an exercise to study the changes in the structure of the virus over time. A combination of changes in the ribonucleic acid of the virus can give birth to a new variant. Currently, it takes over two-three months to get test results of genome sequencing which delays the epidemiological study of the mutated virus in infected patients. With the starting of the laboratory, the results of 380 samples will be available within three-four days.

Dr Jayanti Shastri, in-charge of the molecular diagnostic reference laboratory of the hospital, said, “These tests have three phases—library presentation which in simple form is called pre-sequencing preparation, which takes two-three days. Then we do the sequencing of the samples in the machine that generally takes 4-5 hours. In the third stage, we do analysis of the results to understand the variations.”