New Delhi: Senior virologist Shahid Jameel has resigned from a forum of scientific advisers set up by the government to detect variants of the coronavirus, days after questioning the authorities’ handling of the pandemic.
“It’s correct and I shall have nothing more to say,” Dr Jameel, chair of the scientific advisory group of the forum known as INSACOG, said.
“I am not obliged to give a reason,” he said in a text message to news agency Reuters, adding that he quit on Friday.
INSACOG had come into being in January this year as a scientific body to promote and expedite genome sequencing of the SARS-CoV2 virus and its multiple variants. The consortium had established a network of ten leading laboratories to carry out gene sequencing of virus samples from across the country.
The consortium was initially given a tenure of six months, but later got an extension. The genome sequencing work, which had been progressing at a very slow pace, gathered momentum only after the constitution of INSACOG.