"Similar to the global initiative through GISAID, the collaboration between countries is important to strengthen surveillance on the spread and early identification of SARS-CoV2 and its variants," he remarked while speaking to ANTARA in Jakarta on Wednesday.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a challenge shared by many countries across the globe, which means its handling should also be carried out together, including in terms of surveillance and identification of virus variants, he said.
"These measures cannot be done alone, and countries in the region should be involved even on the global scale," he added.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Indonesia has been a part of the ASEAN COVID Genomics Project and the ASEAN-Wide Anti-COVID-19 Sero-Surveillance Study, he said.
Indonesia is also supporting global efforts for identifying COVID-19 variants by sending genome sequencing results to the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID), he added.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus has mutated and its new variants include those that are more contagious, he noted.
Such conditions make building surveillance capacity and identification of coronavirus variants to determine the characteristics of virus attacks important in efforts to control the transmission of COVID-19, he said.
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Translator: Martha Herlinawati Simanjuntak
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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