The CSIR (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research) is in the process of developing “mega labs” to ramp up testing for COVID-19 as well as improve the accuracy rate.
Basic Facts
The labs will be repurposing large machines, called Next Generation Sequencing machines (NGS).
These machines are normally used for sequencing human genomes, to sequence 1,500 to 3,000 viral genomes at a go to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
These machines can substantially detect the presence of the virus even in several instances where the traditional RT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) tests fail.
It can also trace the evolutionary history of the virus and track mutations more reliably.
(Source: The Hindu)
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