Saudi Gazette report

LONDON — The United Kingdom announced on Wednesday a new package of genomic sequencing support to help Pakistan’s fight against new variants of COVID-19.

Through the New Variant Assessment Platform (NVAP) program, Pakistan will be able to draw on UK expertise and support to detect quickly new, and potentially more dangerous, variants of COVID-19, the UK government said in a press release.

The UK is a world leader in genomic sequencing for COVID-19 variants and the second largest contributor to the international database for the variants.

Through an agreement reached between 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.

British High Commissioner to Pakistan Dr. Christian Turner said: "Sharing world class UK science expertise with Pakistan will help detecting new COVID-19 variants of concern and keep fighting this pandemic."

"This shows the best of UK-Pakistan friendship and our commitment to back Pakistan in building back better from the impacts of COVID-19."

The NVAP was announced in January by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) as a means for the UK to offer support to countries that lack the capability and capacity to effectively identify, assess and track new SARS-CoV-2 variants among their population.

The platform was developed by PHE in April and will be taken forward by the new UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA). It will enable the UK’s unique sequencing and variant assessment capabilities to support other countries’ response to coronavirus (COVID-19), strengthening global health security and protecting people here and abroad.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, around a third of all SARS-CoV-2 sequences submitted to the international GISAID database have been from the UK — we are the second largest contributor globally.

The first countries to benefit from this support and expertise other than Pakistan will be Brazil, Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria.