 everyone and welcome back to TV UP's health issues. This is your host Dr. Teddy Herbosa. And because of our previous episode on molecular biology, we are bringing back Professor Sincha Saloma to discuss the role of the Philippine Genome Center and all the people that have trained in molecular biology in this fight against this pandemic. Welcome back Professor Sincha Saloma. Thank you so much AVP Ted for having me again. Okay, thank you for joining us again. We had a very exciting story in the last episode on how the Philippine Genome Center, the National Institute for Molecular Biology and Biotechnology and the many people you've trained have become a fixture in the University of the Philippines. Now let's talk about the pandemic called COVID-19 and in the beginning the COVID-19 we were sending our test samples to a virology lab all the way in Melbourne, Australia. So they said that a test needed to be done and it was called the RT-PCR. What is RT-PCR? Okay, so in simple terms the meaning of RT-PCR. So RT means reverse transcription or reverse transcriptase, polymerase, chain reactions of RT. And the reason we do RT-PCR is because for the SARS-CoV-2 virus the genetic material is not DNA but RNA. So from RNA template you need to reverse transcribe it to DNA first and then you can do multiple copies of it in a process called polymerase chain reaction. So you need to have a reverse transcription part. Yes, so you need to use an enzyme called reverse transcriptase. So there's an enzyme called reverse transcriptase. So first you have to extract the total RNA from the virus using different kinds of kits. It can be automated, it can be magnetic beads and then from the total RNA you have to reverse transcribe using a reverse transcriptase. The first step is to extract the RNA which is the core genetic code of that virus. Correct. To be an RNA virus so they don't have DNA. Unlike humans and animals we have DNA as our genetic material. Which can again change into an mRNA. Correct. Proteins in our body. Correct. This one from the mRNA virus you extract the RNA and then you reverse transcribe it using an enzyme to a DNA sequence which eventually you go through what is called... Amplify. Amplify copy. Multiple copies. Extraction, reverse transcription, amplification. Correct. So sa dami mo siya so that you can now identify the sequence, the correct sequence. Correct. The identity of the virus you are trying to do. Yes. And what happened at AVP-10 is during the process of amplification the primers have been conjugated to a fluorescent material. So you can do real time, you can do real time observation of the process of amplification. So much so that when multiple copies are being made you can see it in a graph. So they call it a real time RT-PCR because... Sometimes we use RT so RT also as real time but it's actually real time RT-PCR. Some call it QPCR. Quantitative PCR. So in quantitative PCR essentially you can have some values where you can compare it to so that you can quantitate. But for the RT-PCR, RT-PCR that we're doing for SARS-CoV-2, it's not really quantitative but qualitative. So this is the confirmatory test. Now we know the Department of Health and all the infectious disease experts to diagnose SARS-CoV-2 you need to do RT-PCR as described how a molecular biologist does that. And because of that the country spent money to build several molecular laboratories. We had Morgan's board of building molecular laboratory. More than 200. Now 300 now. So we now have 300 molecular laboratories from zero from just one molecular lab test COVID-19 which was our ITM. How did your graduates and people who trained in molecular biology help all of these molecular laboratories? Oh so just to share with you the story in the early part of the pandemic there was only our ITM that was doing it so we can expect that it was also of course in the data good samples and because of that the turnaround time was slow. Some people were getting it at nine days or 10 days later so there was really imperative to increase the nation's capacity for testing. Since we are molecular biologists and RT-PCR is something that we do often we help together with the Department of Health increase capacity. So for this together with NIH because the National Institutes of Health has a biosafety institute or biosecurity institute. So they already have an online they already have a program for safety and biosecurity and from the MBB side is the hands-on training so we have faculty members like Lokwapia Bagamasbad for example who created a manual so that we can train people and come over so that we can help them how to do RT-PCR. And EVP were very very thankful that because you know if you're going to get grants from somewhere it will take time. We got money from the university remember you were so nice. The university gave us about 1.4 million to be able to train a lot of these medics. I think at least 28 labs were capacitated in the national capital region alone. They got their licenses and so they trained with us and and then of course we sent way into uh into an online version and it is very nice that we also have a philippine genome center in Visayas and in Mindanao because then they can also help train people from there. We don't have to come to Manila but in the beginning oh it was really heartwarming because so many of our graduates um and our graduate students and our alumni helping volunteering to these labs. Yes we volunteered. We volunteered to provide hotels for them and health service so that they could volunteer in RITM the National Task Force help coordinate that. You sent me someone who was coordinating with me to help out. Yeah and we housed them in some of them we housed in this man. Yes many people don't realize is they were frontliners too because they are the samples correct virus and some of them even got infected with COVID-19 as well because it's very dangerous the extraction part is the most dangerous part of this process wherein you can uh you can inhale the the virus while handling all the specimens. Yeah so that's why it is very important for them to all get the biosafety certification that was done in NIH so Dr. Eva Kotyong-Kodilapaz, us, Harp and IMBB and also at the Philippine Genome Center we we uh banded together and sometimes when we had reagents we lacked reagents people from the Institute of Biology, Institute of Chemistry also lent their reagents to us particularly for RNA extraction that was really really difficult to get in the beginning so everybody was just so diced helping each other so we were able to have volunteers in San Lazaro Hospital in Lang Center of the Philippines and RIPM and also here at NIH and there in NIH and also here in in the Philippine Genome Center so so many people also helped for example transport them and provide food for them and we had to vaccinate all of them through a genation and if it be probably many people may not have realized it but the diaspora the alumni of MBB the actually raised about three million pesos to help that effort so we were able to to buy vaccines for influenza for the frontliners and then of course some lab gowns you know the scrub suits and to repair some areas in the Philippine Genome Center where we needed cash because that was a time when people or suppliers will not do anything and let you pay in cash so that yeah that was really we cannot procure using the normal government procurement process so the donations from alumni and from friends were really really instrumental for us to get going eventually we improved and improved and we have more licensed labs and then we were the DOH was now able to pay for the medtechs and so on so forth but can you imagine um our medical technology as a degree program it's not really what's up with they're not really trained to become molecular but always to do a lot of this rtpcr work right um they're more uh traditional in terms of a technique microscopic work microscopic work lab work is chemical and colorimetric right but to be able to do you know pipeting one micro liters two micro liters and to use the pipetor properly that was a challenge and also because it's an RNA an RNA of course everybody knows this unstable right has to be done very fast so and because this is a highly infectious material it has to be done in negative pressure lab you know in all these PPEs so there was a protocol when everybody needs to be trained on how to wear the proper gear the proper PPEs so that was part and there was an exam from the national biosafety community uh my security from NIH we also have an online module and as well as hands on module and then we also have hands on training here at mbb so that was great because uh the university through the genome center the nimbb and and the other colleges also biology and chemistry and also the uh all the other genome centers in the u p system yes help help now in uh the visayas in los baños were all contributed yes correct and also evp we also lent our equipment by the way yes oh yes so for example dr uh ray garcia lent his uh ultra low freezers and of course it's biosafety cabinet ulang center and some of our friends helped lent their rtpcr machines i saw our rtpcr machine in tagum when i visited it yes yes this is from up minda now so yeah and up visayas to the western visayas medical center they also i also saw that i also and the yeah and the sift deck people in our network all the molecular biology the sift deck people were uh donating their filter tips to the testing labs that was really nice and philippine carabao center whatever they have they also sent to us there was also something else in testing that we were able to contribute but didn't make a wave later on but i thought it was actually good uh we we had our doctor our deputy director develop a uh pcr uh so can you tell us the story of that so uh dr uh uldestura um who is also the the director by the way of the biosafety the institute for biosafety and biosecurity of na h he developed a rtpcr kit that is really based on the primers of the charity group in germany right so our role at the philippine genome center was really to help validate it meaning to say they had enrolled patients who tested positive and we sequenced them we sequenced their result rtpcr using a different um um capillary sequencer and those which did not test positive but also sequenced hold the in metagenomics to see whether they missed out no so that was a time um when we had to to help in the validation process but i think dr ulde created a version two right they were created a version two which we are using today so that was the gen amplified uh encode encode uh detection kit so that was also our first part and it is purely local and yeah and down very very affordable laboratories there is no need to import and i think he also had a competitive price because yeah and it's getting cheaper and cheaper as the days continue so it's really really competitive now because before the supply chain was a little bit difficult like in the beginning sure one of the other things developed by d o s t funding and or a genome center wherein there's a spin off and there's a private company called manila health tech manila health tech is his supply now let me ask you about uh how viruses behave they mutate so what is the mutation and what is what is a variant what yeah okay so a lot of people are always asking what is the difference between a variant mutation as well as a strain right so okay so when you say a mutation it can be a sing a change in the nucleic acid sequence of uh material so yeah yeah so you have sequence of letters if there is a change there that is called a mutation a mutation can be an insertion a change a deletion yes and it can also be uh it can also result into a deleterious change meaning to say there will be a structural change with implications on function or it can also be a neutral mutation so not all mutations actually are deleterious or harmful so mutations are just normal uh uh neutral and of course a virus mutates as a normal process of its evolution you remember this is an RNA virus and every time it copies itself so reverse don't scribe there is always an error but the error is not so much compared for example to HIV and influenza SARS-CoV-2 is not as error prone as influenza as well as HIV but at any rate oh they mutate faster probably five to ten times faster than SARS-CoV-2 because the SARS-CoV-2 so this is an RNA virus and every time it multiplies a mutation could happen and when it jumps from host to host or let's say from person to person so viruses um really mutate as part of its normal evolution so that is called a mutation the health we say if you want to stop transmis if you want to stop mutation stop transmission very very important because without a host a virus cannot mutate cannot mutate yes correct and then what is a variant a variant a variant now is a virus having those mutations okay so there's a term uh professor rain yung stream clean clean clean clean clean is a clean so so clean in at the we make a tree in the evolution of the virus you can make a tree based on the comparison of the genomic sequence right so you have a root of the tree which is probably the original one from Wuhan China so we call that as a root and then at the moment it mutates it creates branches and branches and branches and sometimes in a particular branch you have several variants there that forms a clade so like a big family or a big branch of the tree we call it a clean so normally in the clade when they do classify it there are some common mutations they possess so how is a variant different from a strain okay so what is a variant so i see media people yeah correct because it's really yeah it's very tempting to say variant and strain interchangeable but when i talk about strain we refer to the big ones meaning to say SARS-CoV-2 strain, MERS strain and uh SARS-CoV-2 this are the strains of the corona virus yes a major and they hate the strain once there is a change in the functionality of functionality so if you notice SARS the original behaved differently than MERS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV-2 and the two behaved differently than correct what's called two correct so while there for example even in symptomatology sometimes they are similar but in terms for example of death rate very very different so uh the most pathogenic of course is MERS which has probably certified to 40% death death for for the moment of persons infected for SARS-CoV the one the original one that was uh famous in Hong Kong that one is about nine to ten percent and this one the the range is about two to four percent so depending on the journal it's four percent others say it's two percent so this is not as deadly or as fatal as MERS but in the public health perspective we are we are scared more of this low mortality like influenza because it continues to propagate and transmit spread and spread until it reaches virus yes they kill the host and then they disappear yeah you're very correct VP because it's not good for the virus to die so a very fatal virus is not good for its propagation if you think about it will disappear it will disappear so so the the most dangerous ones are the ones which are just there in the service spreading and spreading and when it catches or they catch a very sensitive host or a one with pomorbiditis then that's the time that it becomes fatal so this is um we are increasingly seeing this in SARS-CoV-2 it is mutating in a way that it is improving its fitness to the human host so we get to that point where in uh sometime in November the UK which is already vaccinating i think at that time they started to vaccinate already with Pfizer and they found parts of south London still you know transmitting the virus and propagating very hard and the there you go you developed the UK variant so tell us about yeah the UK variant was first discovered in camp so in camp England so sometimes the care so um some people are saying and the WHO discourages us from using the places of the virus as nament lecture but since people cannot remember the numbers sometimes we have to use the place so so the b117 or the b.1.1.7 is also called aka the UK variant or also the camp variant and the reason they so it can because it's already a sub variant called Bristol and Liverpool so these are these are UK variants with a 484 nutrition okay so that was found so when they look at their database they discovered that um it was found late september about september 20 the first one no september 20 but it really came into the picture because in december there were a lot of cases and then when they sequenced it uh it has this tail tail mutation called the n501 y it had the n501 y so the UK variant does not have the e484 k it only had the n501 y nutrition the p681 h mutation and the particular delusion so what was concerning about the UK variant was number one it was associated with a spike in cases in England number one and number two is the mutation occurs in the receptor binding site the d614g what is practically all over the world now which appeared and spread in june this also was also associated with increased transmissibility but on top of the d614g mutation there was also this mutation in the n501 y and what is concerning about the n501 y in contrast to the d614g is the location of the mutation is in the region that contacts the ACE2 receptor so what is the ACE2 receptor this is the receptor in the human cell upon which the virus enters so there are data that indicates that it seems to be that this mutation allows the virus to hold on better to the host cell and that has been associated with probably a 50% increased transmissibility with the n501 y so that was the UK we call it the UK variant which actually has a lot of children now Bristol and Liverpool because it mutates and interestingly you know this virus in different parts of the world why is it that they have the same mutation in the same location for example so we we call it is a process of convergent evolution so for example the one we found first described in the Philippines it was a e484k so the nickname for that is the EEC mutation because e484k so EEC mutation of course South Africa has theirs in December probably it started last October and then spread in December in in the Nelson Mandela B so that was also the B1351 or the so-called first described in South Africa that one has an e484k mutation the one in Brazil and this is very interesting in Brazil because the first wave in Manaus Brazil they when they did antibody testing they think that the people there are 75% infected in Manaus Brazil and then they had a second wave and when they sequenced the virus it had this p.1 it is now called p.1 variant where they had a mutation number one in the e484k region it had that mutation it also had the UK N501Y mutation so it had the two mutations and they it suggests probably EVP that it can be associated with re-infection meaning to say there is a very likely possibility that the e484k and they also have another on the 417 region could change the virus in a way that the host immune system it can evade the host immune system even those who were originally affected by the original strain you know the old strain so that was really the concern for the p.1 mutation and it's clear no you're describing all these mutations people don't know that the Philippine Genome Center was actually doing biosurveillance prior to the orids because you were telling me you were giving me reports of returning Filipinas and then you sequence you do a full genome sequence on them so the RT-PCR does only a segment correct correct but still the expensive test which is a full genome sequencing which you do uh i think it told me it takes so long how long does it take to do full genome sequencing probably three days no three days and you were doing if you don't have a lot of samples if you can do it overnight 25 samples of overnight yes but it's expensive if you do little small number expensive many cheaper so in the beginning you were uh watching already this mutation in fact i saw your graphs i saw your claims and presented to me by some of your people uh and then you were also able to identify uh routes of infection entry routes of entry what you call this the epidemiology the biologic epidemiology of where our viruses came from in fact you had that some came from Germany some came from yeah so when we were doing you remember evp we were part of the validation of the new picket uh the m-tech NIH kit so when we did the validation we were given the opportunity to as part of the protocol we were sequencing about 500 no we were sequencing about 500 no they did RT-PCR testing we sequence about 125 125 whole genomes no our samples of the patients who volunteered through the Philippine general in the Philippine general hospital and then when we were doing the sequencing we realized that the many that many of the whole genome sequences there were actually very similar to the diamon princess cluster okay oh so so a bat bat when you go to the history of the patients in pgh and our infectious disease they never traveled they were never so that was in the community and take note that this was march 22 to 26 so we repatriated we repatriated our 495 seafarers from the diamon princess and they went to Clark right they went to Clark so we have 495 seafarers but it is perplexing how come we have many in the community having similar sequences so yeah so very very interesting so number one either a denovo or someone escaped and there there are the people there so so if we be it being a denovo is not not very likely because we have several signature mutations they cluster very closely with the diamon princess cluster and you remember there was a time that some people suggested that they were came coming from india uh we would like now we had to correct that notion the one that were submitted by india also most likely came from the diamon princess because the diamon princess had many seafarers from india i see i see but that's clear so so now we had this outbreak of uh b117 in the uk and everybody gets scared because there's a the media mainstream media tells a story of a new strain when in fact you knew about these strains and you were following them up so suddenly the people clamor the department of health to do biosurveillance because they said we will do biosurveillance and unfortunately the only ones that can do biosurveillance were three institutes the ritm and it's a very small sequencing machine the h which also has a small sequencing machine and your very modern uh genetic sequencer which was told to me by eva kuchako de la pas and chancelor menchit uh better than the one in france we visited the genome center oh yeah yeah this is the same one at the higher end correct yeah so evp that what happened so sometimes many governments divide this equipment and then all these equipment makers they make a new version of it so you cannot buy a new one because you just bought the old one so so so we in our case we have this nova 66 000 it's a very powerful machine that's why we can do 750 or 3000 at a time so many people were saying why we are doing 750 only right i said you shouldn't be perplexed that we can do 750 at a time because before we were only doing one two three at a time not 750 all in all so uh we had that and all the time maybe we should run through how the full genome sequence okay because the media always asked me why is the government not doing more biosurveillance and why can't they increase so okay yes so this is the process of sequencing so you remember you'll remember we need to have to isolate the virus using a kit it can be automated it can be manual so from the RNA we need to reverse transcribe it to DNA using an enzyme called reverse transcriptase now from RNA to DNA and then we have to do several rounds of PCR so how do we do this evp in the beginning what we did was we just sequence everything and by informatically we just look for the virus in a process called metagenomics we realize that for our for virus for SARS-CoV-2 if you do metagenomics there is a lot of um possibility that you cannot pick it up why the moment you actually extract the RNA you are not only extracting RNA of the virus you also extract human RNA materials and contaminating RNA so if we want to sequence only the virus we need to enrich the sample we call that sample enrichment so that means prior to sequencing we actually do PCR amplification of the entire virus using overlapping primers but if we are going to do 750 at a time each sample should have its own barcode meaning to say it has own its own signature and its own signature so that when they are together we can actually at the end of the sequencing we and during bioinformatics analysis we can demultiplex so from an RNA you know you have an RNA virus you make it into a DNA you subject it into many rounds of PCR so that only the virus sequence is enriched okay and then for each sample you have to have a barcode to say this is sample A sample B sample C so for 750 they have to be actually barcoded meaning to say there are signature sequences for sample A, B, C and D and then we subject them to DNA sequencing so just for sample enrichment EVP is really really very tedious because it's several rounds of PCR okay and then after that we bring them to the machine correct the machine the genome sequence are these more than 50 million machine probably 80 million machine so we base it there and it will run for about 12 hours it used to run for 24 hours now it's can run for 12 hours then we run it for 12 hours and then of course the moment the sequences are there of it goes to the bioinformatics core facility they will analyze the sequences meaning to say they will demultiplex so they will try to assemble all letter A's sample one sample two sample three sample four and then they will see whether the sequence quality is good and then they will assign a lineage so that is the first part so immediately after that we gave it to the DOH now the question arises why cannot we make more why is it that only Philippine Genome Center is doing the DNA sequencing right number one you need to have a special equipment for that number two you need to have very trained manpower for DNA sequencing and it's not easy to train people for this one RTPCR is delicate enough and this is many many times more complicated than RTPCR and then you need to have a team for bioinformatics to analyze the sequences so it's a whole team doing this work so in the Philippine Genome Center for example you have a team for clinical genomics doing the extraction in the negative pressure lab right and then the RNA is turned over to a team that will do the reverse transcription and the prime enrichment of the sample so that only the viral sequences are amplified and then that will be given to the DNA sequencing core facility for sequencing in the expensive equipment after the sequences come out it has to be turned over to the bioinformatics core facility to make sense of the sequences that came out of the machine so can you imagine the whole team doing this and that is just first part afterwards we have to analyze mutations, relationships and that's why we were able to detect for example p.3 b117 and so on and so forth and we can also detect for example if the arena cluster most likely this came from this person this came from this person this came from this person if the sampling is heavy enough so that's correct so you report all your findings as a genomic center you even share your data and your findings to other genomic centers in the world as you said this is a very small community everybody knows everybody so everybody shares their samples like Japan has identified the p3 variant so has the UK because gave them that you found this particular variation so before we upload EVP before we upload our sequences we have to get sick permission from the Department of Health as to whether or not it's okay to upload and that for example the metadata normally the metadata we include is only the place where the sample was taken and also the time when it was taken so those are uploaded so before we upload our sequences we seek permission from the BH and then we upload but there's now a relationship between the Philippine Genome Center and the Department of Health Epidemiology and Euro yes also to try to consolidate your report so UNISON so that the fight for covid is uh collaborative and not correct individuals yeah it's really a partnership between the government uh us and the academia and also the partnership between the many labs private and public all over the country who send their samples to us so professor sinja what is the situation now i saw a recent report of the DOH which uh charted the numbers of uh b11k the numbers of p3 the numbers of the brazilian the south africa sabi nga nila parang misuniverse meron na percent of this actually evp those were just the variants of concern or variants under investigation prior to this actually we had many many variants coming from named uae variant many actually the ua variant is number one in terms of uh prevalence or number or detected number one is uae variant number two is hong kong variant we also have spanish variant to the b point well yeah we have spanish variant so and then of course we have the brazil variant that is not a variant of concern so there are different kinds of brazil variant and there are actually many kinds of uk variants that's a uk sequencing so many so they have a variant of concern and other variants that are not of concern brazil also the same so we have lots of variants more than 40 more than 60 we have detected so far but we only uh flag those variants of concern or the variants under investigation so evp we actually have um we are also looking for for example variants under investigation or variants of concern from california or new york we are also on the watch out for these variants so what is like what is ncr uh what is the predominant and ncr so the unfortunately unfortunately the the b117 and the b1351 has already spread so right one in south african right yeah correct so the the one that was first described in south africa has already spread as well as for the one that was first described from the uk from camp uk has already spread to all the cities and municipalities of the national capital region and it has also begun to spread in calabazon area and in some areas in luzon so not many but we see some cases for example in in central luzon also in region two and the car cordillera administrative region actually has a number of 117 so we were able to a certain degree contain the one in cordillera you remember the one in bengep and latinidad i think that was contain there was massive contact tracing there that was contained but there is also a branch that went into the cordillera not direct from the uk but through the national capital region so oh so when we look at our tree we look at our tree there was one so the one from the one in latinidad if you look at the tree is direct import direct import from the uk if you look at the root of the tree but the other cases now that we have at the cordillera administrative region is the one that came first to ncr and then from ncr to cordillera administrative region so that also tells us that um uh there are some uh weeks for example in our quarantine measures when we had returning overseas Filipinos coming into the Philippines so in the beginning you remember the moment they become negative we ask them to go back to their provinces and that we can just quarantine there but sometimes the enforcement is not very strong or sometimes the desire of people to meet families and relatives is there and then after two or three days they become positive so then it has begun to spread so that's why our iatf made some recommendations with um six days sample six day swabbing right not rather than first day swabbing but so the we the changes were implemented but there is also a possibility that by the time that change happened for example the b1351 has already entered our community right so if you look at the b1351 which is the one first described in south africa the first time we got it we noticed it was in pasay we were so surprised it was in pasay because we have been looking since december december and january but in pasay and it was also because there was a surge of cases in pasay wow and then we did deep sampling in pasay so we have a lot of samples coming from pasay and then the national capital region so we did the run together with eb and the nah to simply focus on the national capital region and then we were able to detect more cases of the 351 so of course we have the b117 or the so-called uk variant a lot of these really we detected from our oats from the airport so even if you know you have a number of 392 some of the many of these from the 392 we really caught in the airport probably 50% of them were caught in the airport and then the how about half are in our communities but the one the b.1.351 which was first described in south africa that one very few were detected from the airport at least from the one we have on our sequencing results not very many came from the airport only a small number the rest of the samples we got are from our communities so it spread so fast at least in the national capital region first we talk we saw it in a small number of cases in pasay but then you see it in the neighboring town of makati manila and then calabarzon and that is in a span of 30 days or 45 days it's so fast so and we also increasingly see for example that people are saying that a lot of the infections are occurring in our homes right in our homes so when one is infected the entire family is infected that is a very signature observation of variants of concern and wHO also said that with variants of concern home quarantine is not really advised because that will infect everyone everyone in the house the other thing people don't know so now we we saw from your discussion that the department of health the epidemiology bureau the iatf has depended solely on the philippine genome center for now for now and we have uh in fact the department of science and technology with all the money it invested in the pgc is very happy because their investment in science and technology has proven value to us correct not only this that because i had dinner recently with the wHO representative uh dr rabi abansing here and he wanted to get in touch with you oh we are already in talk so maybe you can tell the people why the uh wHO people was interested in our philippine genome center so i gave your number and you talked about that maybe you can discuss a little without closing everything yes so we are now together with the department of health we are now in close consultation with the wHO experts also here as well as in austria primarily because of our interest in p.3 number one it is a variant under investigation so what is your protocol in order to study what is a variant under investigation because of the signature mutations that p.3 has we wanted to know whether it is involved in in christian's disability or whether the the symptoms are are any graver so far ebp at least for people p.3 we have not seen so far any the growth is not it's not as high as the one in the 351 or the south african variant so we are studying that and also because we need to um so we were able to describe the p.3 the wHO is interested to see what we are doing and we are also asking the wHO our government is asking the wHO for help on how to investigate a variant under investigation what are the protocols that have to be done it's number one and also because of the increase in cases in metromonella particularly in the area of genomic epidemiology you see genomic epidemiology it's a new field many of our experts in the duh are field epidemiologists so how we incorporate this um knowledge of genomics and epidemiology together so that we can inform public health and it will have impact on public health is something that is a challenge to everyone so we are looking for asking wHO for example for help in genomic epidemiology so that the sequences that we derive from the philippine genome center will be properly um utilized so that it will impact the responses of our government public health laws not only that i think now even the region because the wHO is talking about the role of the philippine genome center in regional public health and so evp we are soon going to upload with approval of the duh we already have about 5000 sequences right so um we already have the go signal from the secretary of health to upload these sequences in public databases but the eb will just look at the metadata as to validate the metadata and then as soon as the eb validates so the philippine genome center is ready to upload about 5000 of our sequences to the global community well uh it's been a very interesting discussion about the rtpcr mutations variations bio surveillance and the future of the philippine genome center any final words from you so uh what the pandemic has told us evp is that the virus will keep on mutating and mutating if the transmission is not kept low so it is very very important for everyone to adhere to the minimum public health standards and to help each other we have to control the spread of this virus otherwise we will keep on looking and looking for all many local variants that that will develop number two what this pandemic has also told us that science works and that science is here as a power of good and that we have a role to play in public health at ensuring the safety of our citizens and our travelers and also in helping our country return to the new normal as we try to recover economically mentally psychologically and health wise in this pandemic thank you very much professor sincha saloma of the philippine genome center it's been a very interesting discussion ladies and gentlemen we've seen with this discussion and this episode that today's public health problems and concerns have to be addressed using deep science and new science the issues of public health are no longer solved by just charts and contact tracing we are now using very important investments in the field of genomics in the field of sequencing genetic sequencing and our philippine genome center investments and the people that professor sincha saloma has trained has been a major front liner why would say people who watch our back in the medical field people who help us in the direction and the policies we make and truly to fight a pandemic we need science this is your host dr. teddy herbosa thank you very much for joining us thank you once again