Surveillance should be done for all types of diseases: Former DG, CSIR

By Shalini Bhardwaj
New Delhi [India], December 26 :Amid the upswing in COVID-19 cases in India , speaking to ANI, Dr. Shekhar C Mande , former DG, CSIR and Distinguished Professor, Bioinformatics Centre, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, said surveillance should be done not only for COVID-19 cases but also for other diseases.
"Surveillance always helps. I think surveillance is not only for SARS-CoV-2, but I think we should have surveillance for all kinds of different infections and the surveillance essentially means watching what kind of diseases are spreading, like antimicrobial resistance.In fact, you will know that JN.1 was picked up in many parts of the country from the wastewater surveillance system. So surveillance is a very good idea in any case."
"This is a variant of Omicron and this one already had more than 30 mutations in it. So all the world was watching very carefully to see whether that would spread very rapidly or not, but that particular one would not happen. But it has one additional mutation. This mutation appears to be interesting because it seems to be actually spreading faster than the parents did earlier. And therefore, WHO is calling it a Variant of Interest (VOI). It is not calling it a Variant of Concern (VOC), yet." He added
On the additional vaccine dose, he further said that more data is required: "We don't have full data yet; some people have even taken a booster and many people have had COVID. I don't think people need to worry too much.".