Shahid Jameel Resigns- Chief Advisor Of Centre’s Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) Panel: “a stubborn response to evidence-based policies.”
Shahid Jameel Resigns
Endless provocations are being faced by India during the COVID-19 pandemic. The country is on the verge of witnessing massive destruction as no governmental organization is taking up its responsibility and hiding its irresponsible behavior behind the face of the blame game.
The Kejriwal government stated that the deaths of thousands of people occurred in the capital due to the lack of oxygen supply. But later, an interrogation probed on the alleged party revealed, Delhi has abundant oxygen supply, and due to the CM’s negligence, the innocent people have succumbed to death.
Similarly, PM Modi prioritized the Central Vista project instead of advancing the medical health care infrastructure of India. On the other hand, the vaccination drive is slowly losing its steam as merely 5% of the population has been fully vaccinated yet. This will take 3 years for the country to fully vaccinate the citizens if the vaccination drive occurs at the current pace. Nevertheless, the PM dismantled all the chances of putting a nationwide lockdown to save the economy, but the economy is also dipping.
Several experts and consultancies have predicted that India’s GDP will reach 9% by the year 2022. If the third wave occurs, which is inevitable according to several scientists, then the GDP may stumble down by 8.2%
Shahid Jameel quits COVID’s genome surveillance project
Shahid Jameel, a senior virologist, and director of the Trivedi School of Biosciences at Ashoka University, resigned from the position of the chair of the scientific advisory group of Indian SARS-COVID Genomics Consortium, INSACOG. The Union government set this forum last year in December for the epidemiological and laboratory surveillance of the different strains circulating in India. Jameel has not mentioned the reasons for his resignation yet, from one of the most critical responsibilities assigned by the government.
Recently, he wrote an article in the New York Times, in which he said that scientists in India are facing “a stubborn response to evidence-based policies.” Jameel, a former chief executive of the Wellcome Trust DBT India Alliance, is known for his research into the Hepatitis E virus, confirmed New Indian Express, his decision to step down from the role but declined to comment further. Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan gave no response on the matter.
The center set up INSACOG the previous year, mainly less than 5 months ago, to check out and investigate the effects after the B117 variant, and identify the genomic sequence of SARS COVID-19. This new variant was found to be mutated from the UK and then arrived in India.
10 laboratories are been set up under the consortium to study the various aspects of the virus. National Centre for Disease Control and INSACOG have been allied together to study the virus. The government announced 115 crore funding to carry out this project, but later, the department of biotechnology under the Union Ministry was asked to do the funding by itself. Official sources said the initial amount could only be released in March and the revised project value was $ 80.
Scientists associated with many consortium labs have said that they are doing a lot of genomic observation work from their own limited, limited divisions.
