Meet Priya Abraham, director of National Institute of Virology in Pune

Pune: Dr. Priya Abraham has not talked to her family in Vellore for days as she has been busy literally 'looking' for the coronavirus. Being the director of the National Institute of Virology in Pune, the foremost institution in the country that tests for the novel coronavirus, Priya has dedicated all her time for her country.

Priya, who hails from Kottayam in Kerala, has given up her favourite past time activities like gardening, reading and working out to monitor the sample testing at the laboratory herself. Amid the COVID-19 outbreak, hundreds of samples reach the laboratory on a daily basis. Around 1200 samples are tested in a day in the labs here.

Dr. Priya says that it is difficult to identify the cronovirus through a regular culture process. The scientists and technicians at the institute have been busy separating the COVID-19 from the samples since January 24.

After separating the COVID-19 virus, it would be probed to identify how it works against the medicines. This is one of the important steps in developing a vaccine or medicine for the coronavirus. Dr. Priya was working as the head of the department of clinical virology at the CMC in Vellore when she was appointed as the director of the National Institute of Virology in Pune, two months ago.