In Britain, scientists have created an early warning system, which can tell in advance about the coming epidemic. This early warning system is genetic. It tells the system with precision which respiratory viruses can take dangerous forms.
This early warning system was created by a team of scientists at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridgeshire. This center is the world’s best genetic research and DNA sequencing center. Now the center is turning it into a cheap and easily replaceable technology so that the virus can be monitored worldwide with this system in place. These include influenza virus, respiratory syncytial virus, corona virus and other old pathogens.
The aim of the project to create this system was to know the Respiratory Viruses and Microbiome Initiative so that DNA sequencing technology could be developed, which could be used to prepare a warning system for viral, bacterial and fungal species about upcoming epidemics and to detect future epidemics. For this, the sample taken from the patient’s nose will be the main basis.
This institute gave the first information about the corona variant to the world. According to Evan Harrison, the lead scientist who created this system, Britain is at the forefront of genomic surveillance in the world. 20% of the whole world’s genome sequencing of corona has been done in Britain. Awan said, the technology that we have created has helped a lot in the monitoring of Covid-19, as well as proved to be useful in fighting the corona virus in the whole world.
According to Awan, so far we are making this technology even bigger. We can monitor the whole world. We can monitor all types of respiratory viruses. In particular, we can tell which factors are there, through which the epidemic spreads and where it is. When does that virus spread an epidemic? In the last 20 years, there have been three different forms of the corona virus. SARS in China, MERS in the Middle East and then Corona virus.
After December 2020, the result of all the genomic surveys is that we were able to find different variants of Corona. We were able to tell which variant is more dangerous. John Sillitoe, head of the Genomic Surveillance Unit at the Sanger Institute, says this early warning system is a game changer. We were able to predict the spread of several variants and the emergence of new variants.
According to John, this technology should be in laboratories around the world so that every country can predict any epidemic at its level in time. With this, the entire world can be checked and it can be easily found out in which country the epidemic can spread. Many countries around the world have small sequencing machines in labs. It cannot handle many samples. That’s why we have created a system that can test a large number of samples and report at high speed. Within a year, we will make such a system, which can be used all over the world and it will tell about the next epidemic. John said, so far we have sequenced 2000 genomes of respiratory virus using this technology.