Defence, atomic labs join the fight against Coronavirus

Published March 23, 2020

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By admin

SOURCE: ET

The government has asked defence and atomic research labs to join the national effort to find a solution to deal with the Covid-19 virus outbreak. The country’s biotechnology, science and technology research institutions have also been tasked to source clinical samples from any government approved clinical testing sites and do research on the virus.

OPEN TO ALL
The findings should be shared in an open format to the scientific community to maximise the impact of their research. The decision was taken by the empowered committee for Covid-19 response led by Dr Vinod Paul, member of Niti Aayog, and KVijayRaghavan, Principal Scientific Advisor to the government, which held its first meeting on Saturday.

FOLLOWING PROTOCOL
It has mandated that these labs follow established protocols and regulations defined by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). The Pune-based National Institute of Virology has already sequenced the genome of the virus – India being the fifth country to do so – which is essential to do research on finding tests, drugs and vaccines.

Laboratories of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Department of Science and Technology including others with BSL-3 (biosafety levels) and BSL-3+ facilities have also been permitted to culture the virus and serve as additional testing and validation sites for research, wrote VijayRaghavan in the advisory to agencies, including the country’s drug controller.

“Results from such research are required to be expeditiously shared in open formats to maximise impact of research. Clinical care agencies are directed to enrich the open dataset by providing deidentified clinical data,” it said.

The advisory has also tasked all government and private labs with sharing the samples as soon as they have ethical approval for the research.

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