Apart From Vaccine, Research On Drugs Should Be Expedited

Dr Priya Abraham, who heads the National Institute of Virology in Pune, and her team have successfully isolated the SARS-CoV-2 virus, enabling scientists to work on vaccine candidates and drug research. It will also help evaluate diagnostic kits. In an exclusive interview with THE WEEK, Abraham spoke about her team’s expertise in testing and stressed on the need to ramp up efforts to deal with the ongoing crisis.

- Namita Kohli

Q/ India is the fifth country to have isolated the SARS-COV2 virus. What are the implications of this achievement?

A/ Coronaviruses in general are not very easy to propagate in culture, but we have managed to do it. We now have isolates of the SARS-CoV-2. While we continue to focus on testing, which is our major mandate, the implications of isolating the virus are huge and are crucial at this point. By isolating the virus, the next step would be testing in-vitro for susceptibility to drugs, future vaccine development and development of diagnostic assays including point of care assays.

Q/ Please explain the process behind the isolation of the virus.