The Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Sunday (September 20, 2020) stated that there has been no significant mutation in SARS-CoV-2 (a virus that causes COVID-19) in India and also informed that the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is exploring the saliva-based COVID-19 test.
Harsh Vardhan while interacting with his social media followers through ‘Sunday Samvaad platform’ said, “No significant or drastic mutations have been found in strains of SARS-CoV-2 in India (available in GISAID, global database), till now.”
He added that the ICMR has been conducting large-scale sequencing of nationally representative strains of SARS-CoV-2 virus collected in the past several months over different time-points and detailed results on mutations and evolution of the virus will be available by early October.
On the recent saliva-based test for COVID-19, Harsh Vardhan…