COVID-19 sequencing, testing for new variants for later this year – Health Minister

Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, M.P., said Guyana continues to experience difficulties sending samples to the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA), to test for the Omicron variant.

He said however, that the country should be able to carry out gene sequencing of COVID-19 using a recently procured machine originally bought to sequence malaria parasites in Guyana.

He said this will relieve the burden and delays of sending samples to CARPHA and other labs for testing.

“We’ll start first with the plasmodium falciparum, that’s a malaria parasite, so they’re doing work to sequence that particular parasite but the same techniques can be used to sequence COVID-19…

Maybe during this year, you will see us being able to do our own sequencing and we wouldn’t have to send samples to labs and have these long delays,” Minister Anthony said.

According to him, the health ministry is working collaboratively with the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, to ensure medical personnel are properly trained to conduct the sequencing.

“Last week we had a number of persons from Harvard here that would’ve worked with our staff to teach them how to do sequencing and the staff of the lab also went to Harvard to do some training.”

The machine is currently in the National Public Health Reference Lab, where the sequencing will be conducted.