Noting that the 2021 budget proposal of the agency does not include the detection of new variants like the B.1.1.1.7 or the new UK variant, the Department of Health (DOH) has requested for an additional budget of P362 million from the Department of Budget (DBM) for the sustenance of one year processing for genome sequencing to detect the possible new variants in the country.
“The P362 million budget [proposed to the DBM], this was consolidated requirements coming from UP-NIH [University of the Philippines – National Institutes of Health], UP- PGC [Philippine Genome Center and also the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in an online media forum.
In return, Vergeire said that the DBM has committed to look for the needed fund of the DOH which also earned the support of the Inter-Agency Task Force.
Shortage of reagents
Vegeire said that over the weekend, they encountered problem in running the samples to detect the new UK variant due to the “delay” in the delivery and the “global shortage” of sequencing reagents.
The DOH official said that the reagents already arrived on Sunday night and are about to be released by the Bureau of Customs. On February 3, sequencing kits are also expected to arrive.
To avoid encountering the same problem in the future, Vergeire said that they will purchase in advance at least six months supply needed for the genome sequencing. The DOH usually orders two to three months supply of reagents.
The supply are being ordered from Singapore.
“We are also looking for supplies in the US,” Vergeire added.
Due to the lack of reagents, the PGC has decided to shut down the big machine and use their small machine last week. The small machine can only process about 48 samples per week while the big one can run 750 samples per week.
“But due to shortage we had to use the smaller machine which can only run 48 samples per process,” Vergeire said.
On Monday, Vergeire said that another batch of samples will be sequenced.
Read full article on BusinessMirror