In another major update, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has now requested National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune to send their waste water samples found RT-PCR positive for genome sequencing.
This development came two weeks after the civic body announced its plan of genome sequencing the COVID-19 positive sewage water samples. Additionally, this comes at a time when the coronavirus cases in the city has seen a significant drop after the third wave. Moreover, with this, there was a drop in hospitalization in the city too, therefore, BMC is struggling to get samples for genome sequencing.
The BMC has also urged the NIV to help it to collect samples from Mumbai, especially from areas near the hospitals across the city. Accordingly, they have collected the samples from 16 areas in Mumbai mainly near hospitals and manholes.
Experts said that unlike other respiratory viruses, RNA [ribonucleic acid] of SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses can be detected in human faeces too.
As per the data, till now NIV had collected more than 2000 samples since July 2020, of which over 60 to 70 samples are positive and need to be processed for genome sequencing.
Reports stated that since the inauguration of a genome sequencing machine in BMC’s Kasturba Hospital, the corporation has carried out 7 of the 10 surveys for genome sequencing to understand the pattern of spread in the community.
The tenth survey that was recently announced highlighted that the 237 samples collected by the BMC’s health department were positive for the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
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