As the Centre asked states to buckle up amid a surge in COVID-19 cases in China, Maharashtra’s epidemic surveillance officer said the dominant Coronavirus strain in the neighbouring nation has not caused any adverse effect despite being around in a couple of states for some time now. The BMC said that genome sequencing is on track, and officials are monitoring the situation.

In view of the surge in COVID cases in other countries, the Central government on Wednesday asked all states and Union Territories that it was essential to send samples of COVID patients for genome sequencing to designated INSACOG Genome Sequencing Laboratories, to track and detect variants.