Kerala is one state in the country that has had multiple outbreaks of several infectious diseases in the last two decades. Following an explosive outbreak of chikungunya in 2006, the state witnessed sequential outbreaks of dengue and swine influenza H1N1, followed with two Nipah out breaks, Zika outbreaks and the pandemic of Corona virus. In all these acute febrile illnesses, molecular diagnostics played a key role in confirmatory diagnosis. Among these, the most important was the detection of the first outbreak of Nipah virus which greatly helped in early detection of the cases and control of the spread.

The support of molecular diagnostics in SARS CoV-2 has no parallel. With Kerala being the hot-bed of emerging infectious disease due to its location in one of the biodiversity hot-spots on the globe, our dependence on molecular diagnostic tests is bound to increase exponentially. Since capacity building is a key necessity to address the diagnosis and control of these infections, IAV has given a priority to establish a state of the art molecular diagnostic laboratory to offer services to the public by supporting the diagnostic needs of health care centres. This is envisaged as a flagship programme of the institute that offers an immediate public face to its functioning. Apart from arboviral diagnosis to begin with, the complete spectrum of viral acute febrile illness will be covered in the programme. This will also include de novo sequencing approaches to identify unknown viruses from suspicious samples so as to enable detection of novel pathogens that are emerging in the locality.

Our priority would be to provide a complete spectrum of diagnostic virology capability for public health services and establishment of 24X7 virology service. We envisage to become a regional reference laboratory for virology for this. Also, handling emerging pathogens demands high level biosecurity and this is one area that the state is lacking. We have already initiated establishment of bio-safety containment level -BSL3 to handle highly pathogenic viruses. Also, in order to expand our diagnostic potential, we plan establishment of syndromic disease surveillance and conduct outbreak investigations We also plan to initiate well-designed epidemiological studies and prediction of virus disease trends, which will help for prevention and control of viral disease.