According to reports in the 'Down To Earth' magazine, which quotes an unnamed ministry source, only 7,664 samples (less than 1 per cent of the total positive samples since January 2021 through March 18, 2021) have been sequenced so far. Earlier, reports also indicated it was less than 1 percent. Compare this with the United Kingdom, which has completed the genome analysis of 5 per cent of total Covid cases.
NDTV spoke to Dr. Arvind Lal, Chairman of the FICCI Swasth Bharat Task Force and Executive Chairman of Dr. Lal PathLabs and Dr. Geetha Vani Rayasam, Senior Principal Scientist of CSIR about this.