This will help with tracing and tracking the spread.
The United Kingdom’s use of genomic sequencing to identify a more infectious strain of SARS-COV-2 has largely served as a wake-up call for inadequate use of...
www.marketwatch.com
"Growing concern about “hyper-transmissible” new strains of SARS-COV-2 has raised more awareness about the nation’s lack of federal funding and development of the kind of genomic surveillance that helped the U.K. identify the B.1.1.7 strain and South Africa pinpoint the B.1.351 strain in December. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Jan. 15 it’s likely that B.1.1.7 will become the
most dominant form of the virus in the U.S. by March.
“We simply do not have the kind of robust surveillance capabilities that we need to track outbreaks and mutations,” President-elect Joe Biden said Thursday, when he called for a dramatic boost in genomic sequencing and surveillance as part of
his proposed $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.
Up until mid-December, the U.S. had sequenced about 0.3% of its COVID-19 samples, a percentage that is significantly lower than other developed countries despite the fact that it has
one-fourth of the world’s cases.
In comparison, the U.K. is sequencing about 10% of its samples, and Australia aims to real-time sequence all of the relatively limited number of positive COVID-19 tests there. "
This may become the new concern. E484K is called an escape mutation because it helps the virus slip past the body’s immune defences.
The mutation E484K, first identified in the South African SARS-CoV-2 variant, has now been identified in the UK fast-spreading variant, prompting fears the virus is evolving further and could become resistant to vaccines. Jacqui Wise looks at what we know so far The E484K mutation is not a new...
www.bmj.com
