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Paeniclostridium sordellii, an anaerobic bacterium, causes hepatic infections in alcoholics and post-surgery (liver transplantation). While liver and brain abscesses are rare, drainage procedures and targeted antibiotic therapy assisted by early microbiological diagnosis have reduced mortality rates. We report a rare case of pyogenic liver abscess caused by Paeniclostridium sordellii in India, the early diagnosis of which has led to life saving outcome for the patient. Hence, the microbiological diagnosis and comprehensive medical-surgical treatment are vital for preventing mortality in Paeniclostridium sordellii infections., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Indian Association of Medical Microbiologists. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Purpose: Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) initiated an Inter-Laboratory Quality Control testing (ILQC) program for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) testing. Under this program, SARS-CoV-2 testing laboratories across the country submit specimens to the assigned State Quality Control (SQCs) laboratories for ILQC testing. This study aimed to investigate the performance of public and private SARS-CoV-2 testing laboratories in Delhi and highlights the country's effort in ramping up testing facility with close monitoring of the quality of Covid-19 testing results., Methods: In the present study, two-years of SARS-CoV-2 testing data is included. During July 2020 through February 2022, a total of 1791 anonymised specimens were received from 56 public and private laboratories. These specimens were processed by reverse transcriptase - polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests as per National Institute of Virology (NIV) protocol and the results were uploaded on the ICMR quality control/quality assurance (QC/QA) portal without directly conveying the results to respective participating laboratories. This portal generated a final report stating concordance and intimate results to individual laboratories., Results: Among the 1791 specimens, 25 were rejected and the remaining 1766 were tested. Among these specimens 1691 (95.75%) revealed concordance, and 75 (4.24%) were discordant. A total of 29 laboratories had 100% concordance, 21 laboratories had over 90% concordance and six laboratories had over 80% concordance., Conclusions: The study demonstrates that the establishment of an inter-laboratory comparison program for SARS-CoV-2 testing helped in monitoring quality of SARS-CoV-2 testing in the country., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Indian Association of Medical Microbiologists. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

We report the sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants from 75 patients, using nanopore long-read sequencing chemistry. These data show a range of mutations in spike glycoprotein that are both unique and common to other populations., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS CoV-2) infection is rapidly evolving as a serious global pandemic. The present study describes the clinical characteristics of SARS CoV-2 infection patients. The samples were subjected to reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction or Rapid Antigen test for diagnosis of SARS CoV-2. A cohort of 3745 patients with confirmed diagnosis of SARS CoV-2 infection in a tertiary care center in New Delhi, India were included in this study. Data were collected from offline and online medical records over a period of 6 months. Amongst 3745 SARS CoV-2 infected patients, 2245 (60%) were symptomatic and 1500 (40%) were asymptomatic. Most common presenting symptom was cough (49.3%) followed febrile episodes (47.1%), breathlessness (42.7%), and sore throat (35.1%). Cough along with breathlessness (24.1) was the most common combination of symptoms followed by fever with cough (22.7). The most common comorbidity found among symptomatic group was diabetes (42.5%) followed by hypertension (21.4%) and chronic kidney disease (18%). Comorbidities like diabetes mellitus, chronic diseases of lungs, heart, and kidneys were found to be common in symptomatic group and this was found to be statistically significant (p < .05). COVID-19 is an evolving disease and data from our study help in understanding the clinic-epidemiological profile of patients., (© 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)