On Thursday, Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar approved Rs50 million in funds for the provincial health department to place an order for genetic sequencing technology.
“Punjab will be the first province to buy a gene sequencing machine,†said Captain (r) Muhammad Usman Younis, secretary of the primary and secondary healthcare department, in a press statement.
The machine will allow investigation of what variants of the virus are causing deaths in the second wave of the pandemic, the statement said.
Contrary to this, only the Islamabad-based National Institute of Health had a gene sequencing machine and samples collected from positive patients in Punjab had to be sent to the federal laboratory for a reading.
