The US is expanding its ability to detect coronavirus mutations with genomic sequencing, as experts have warned that new variants could drive up cases and hospitalizations.
As the more transmissible B.1.1.7 Covid-19 variant has led to stricter closure measures in the UK, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has entered into partnerships with the US company Illumina, which is developing technological technology, and Helix, which A Covid has -19 test platform.
It also collaborates with LabCorp, one of the largest clinical laboratory networks, in addition to seven university laboratories, and has released more sequencing funds to state and local health departments.
Throughout the pandemic, the capacity of genomic sequencing in the US has lagged behind that of the UK and, according to experts, blinded it to the emergence of new variants such as B.1.1.7, which could make the CDC predictions the most common strain in the US is by March.
According to the Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium, in early December, the UK detected virus mutations in about 9 per cent of tests. The CDC said in late December that the U.S. passed only about 0.3 percent of the tests.
Francis deSouza, CEO of Illumina, said it was important to sound the alarm about the need to quickly create a better infrastructure. The lack of a central hub for the detection of new variants has meant that laboratories regularly shared series on open source platforms, he said.
The identification of two further variants last week in Ohio increased the urgency. ‘We are now in a foot race between these emerging [more] transmissible strains and the deployment of vaccines, ”Mr deSouza warned.
The UK has a long tradition of genetic code research, dating back to the original discovery of DNA’s double helix structure by Francis Crick and Jim Watson in the 1950s, followed by Fred Sanger’s pioneering development of no-order technology in the 1970s.
Scientists use genomic sequences to identify each gene in the virus and create a series of letters. They then look for differences in the sequence and try to understand if these mutations change how the virus behaves.
Early in the March pandemic, the British government made £ 20 million available to fund sequencing capacity and provided further funding in November. Denmark and Australia have also compiled a large number of positive cases of coronavirus.
Loyce Pace, executive director of the Global Health Council and a member of President-elect Joe Biden’s advisory board Covid-19, said he recommended the new U.S. government place a “greater focus” on genomics oversight to understand where the variants are and whether existing vaccines and treatments can tackle them.
“We realize that the U.S. is not really doing enough to detect these variants,” she said during an event hosted by Johns Hopkins University.
In Ohio, Daniel Jones, the researcher who discovered the new variant, said his team started sequencing ten samples per week, but plans to increase the number tenfold.
Bill Haseltine, a scientist who has done pioneering work on infectious diseases and the human genome, said the US was “very complacent” in not detecting mutations.
“Once we look, we’ll find it, and it could drive the extraordinary infection rates that have amazed people like that in Southern California,” he said.
The U.S. is on the verge of hitting 400,000 deaths due to Covid-19, the highest in the world, while California currently has the worst-hit New York as the state with the most deaths in the pandemic.
Bette Korber, a computer biologist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said scientists in Los Angeles had recently begun submitting genomic series of Sars-Cov-2 samples online.
“Everyone and their brother, who I now work in a lab, started this,” she said. “The UK variant will do a positive thing and alert people to the importance of continuing to detect the virus, especially as we implement vaccines and therapies.”
With confirmed cases in the US approaching 24m, Dan Barouch, a professor at Harvard Medical School, said the US should monitor how the virus was mutated.
‘Unfortunately, the United States has the highest Covid rate in the world. And consequently, there is also a chance that a variant could arise here, ‘he said. “If we can not control Covid in our country, it also endangers the whole world.”
Additional reporting by Kiran Stacey in Washington