Govt. to send COVID-19 test samples to NY Medical School to test for variants

Mar 12, 2021 News

Kaieteur News – Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, has revealed that the government will be sending COVID-19 test samples to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA, to have them tested for the different COVID-19 variants. This is following Anthony’s announcement last month that the government is actively exploring additional avenues to have test samples sent abroad for genetic sequencing.
The government had fostered an agreement with the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) to have test samples sent there for genetic sequencing. At least 10 COVID-19 test samples were sent a month ago for testing at CARPHA and took almost two weeks to have the results returned.
In recent months three new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged and spread across the globe. These variants are the B.1.1.7 or the United Kingdom (UK) variant, the B.1.351 or the South Africa variant and the P2 or Brazil variant. It has been found that these variants are more transmissible, which means that they are more readily spread from person-to-person.
Notwithstanding, Anthony had said that every effort will be made to detect the new strains.
Notably, Guyana lacks the capacity to test for the new variants since it is done using genetic sequencing and neither the private nor public health sector has access to such resources.
“That school, they have a special department that has been doing a lot of research using genetic sequencing and with Covid they have been tracking the evolution of the virus around the globe and so they have been working in different countries, and they have been accepting samples and sequencing these samples to get a sense of the mutations that are occurring with the virus,” the Health Minister said as he spoke about the medical school to which the samples will be sent.
He disclosed that the partnership has already been initiated and very shortly test samples will be sent to analyze and detect the possibility of any variants circulating in Guyana. “It is important that we track the variants that are circulating because some of these variants can have faster transmission so moving from one person to another can increase and it means that more people can get infected,” Anthony noted.
Dr. Anthony had also announced the government exploring the possibility of having test samples sent to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States of America, through the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), adding that they were working it out.

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Govt. to send COVID-19 test samples to NY Medical School to test for variants

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