St. George’s university boasts of having new DNA sequencing capabilities at the campus-based Windward Islands Research and Education Foundation (WINDREF) which will help identify new variants of the coronavirus in Grenada.
This it says is drawing on the strong partnership between the University and the Government of Grenada throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new DNA sequencer will also be a resource for other Caribbean nations to identify additional infectious disease variants.
The potential public health impacts of having this research tool says Dr. Calum Macpherson, Director of WINDREF and the Dean of SGU’s School of Graduate Studies, is critical information that can be referred to when creating policies and responses to the virus, as a country and region.
With funding from SGU, WINDREF acquired two DNA sequencing machines early December last year to identify pathogen variants.
The process, which entails testing infected individuals’ RNA samples for viral load, and then comparing the results to global databases, was used to confirm that the Omicron variant was detected in patients in Grenada, as at the end of December.
The research team at WINDREF reportedly underwent an intense six-hour online training session, in order to learn how to use the sequencer.
The training was provided by Dr. Nikita Shadeo, Mr. Vernie Ramkisson, and Mr. Soren Nicholls from the PAHO-WHO Reference Sequencing Lab at the UWI St. Augustine Campus located in Trinidad, being headed by Professor Christine Carrington.
