Fighting new variants of Covid-19: UK announces new package for Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: The United Kingdom has announced a new package of Genomic Sequencing Support to help Pakistan’s fight against new dangerous variants of COVID-19. Through the New Variant Assessment Platform (NVAP) program, Pakistan will be able to draw on the UK expertise and support to detect new, and potentially more dangerous variants of Covid-19 quickly.

According to the British High Commission, the UK is a world leader in Genomic Sequencing for COVID variants and the second largest contributor to the international database for the variants.

Through an agreement inked between the UK’s Public Health England (PHE) and Pakistan’s National Institute for Health (NIH), the UK will share its expertise and provide reagents to increase Genomic Sequencing capacity in Pakistan. The support will also include technical advice on bio-informatics workflow and technical processes.

The British High Commissioner to Pakistan, Dr Christian Turner, said on the occasion that Pakistan would help detect new COVID variants of concern and keep fighting the pandemic by using the world class UK science expertise.

“This shows the best of UK-Pakistan friendship and our commitment to back Pakistan in building back better from the impacts of Covid-19,” said Dr Christian Turner. It is pertinent to mention that the New Variant Assessment Platform (NVAP) is a program announced by the Secretary of State for Health in January 2021. Its aim is to offer Kindgom’s support for SARS-CoV-2 new variant identification to those countries that wish to monitor the variants penetrating in their population, but they do not have the capability to identify those variants by themselves.

Strong surveillance, including Genomics, is key to identifying and controlling the transmission of the virus. The Kingdom’s support through the NVAP will provide valuable information to other countries, allowing them to strengthen their own Genomic Surveillance. The NVAP is led by PHE and will be taken forward by the UK Health Security Agency, working closely with the Department for Health and Social Care and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

“The NVAP will collaborate with key scientific partners both within the UK and across the world”, the sources said. The UK has strong scientific links globally which are being leveraged in developing the program. The UK is committed to supplying vaccines globally. At the G7, the UK announced that it would donate 100 million vaccines globally.

The initiative is in addition to £548m funding for COVAX which will provide vaccines free of cost to over 90 countries, including Pakistan. The UK scientists have played their role in the development of the Oxford-University AstraZeneca vaccine.

The United Kingdom is funding a new center in the country that will play a key role in controlling zoonotic diseases and protecting the livelihoods of farmers. The UK has pledged £18m aid to Pakistan for protecting lives and mitigating the health and economic impacts of the pandemic.