Genomic Surveillance
Tracking the coronavirus’s evolution, letter by letter, is revolutionizing pandemic science - Sarah Zhang
image by: The Scientist
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Francis deSouza on the need for a global “Bio Force” to track viruses
CYBER-SECURITY BARELY existed as a business consideration until the “Melissa” virus struck in 1999, followed by the cruel “I love you” virus and the aptly named “Slammer”. They crippled companies but spawned a new industry to carry out global surveillance of computers and networks to identify, catalogue and repel emerging threats. Today cybersecurity firms provide that information to governments, companies and individuals to protect themselves.
A similar revolution is needed for biological viruses—a global surveillance system led by the private sector working in partnership with governments at all levels. Where Britain has a National Cyber Force to protect digital infrastructure…
Resources
We Now Can See a Virus Mutate Like Never Before
Tracking the coronavirus’s evolution, letter by letter, is revolutionizing pandemic science.
Scientists sharing Omicron data were heroic. Let’s ensure they don’t regret it
The teams in Africa who detected the new Covid genome moved quickly. Their actions should not result in economic loss.
How the U.K. Became World Leader in Sequencing the Coronavirus Genome
Every week across the U.K., a fleet of courier trucks ferries chilled waste material from half a million Covid-19 tests to a genome-sequencing facility in Cambridgeshire, eastern England. The daily operation is part of a Covid-19 surveillance system that has made the U.K. the world’s leading sequencer of the coronavirus genome and helped it to spot a more contagious, and possibly more deadly, variant of the virus that in most countries would have long gone unnoticed.
To catch variants like omicron, the world needs to sequence way more virus genes
The US’s genome sequencing system has improved, but surveillance is dangerously inadequate in much of the world.
What We Learned About Genetic Sequencing During COVID-19 Could Revolutionize Public Health
One of the most powerful ways of fighting a pandemic caused by a never-before-seen virus is by decoding the microbial culprit’s genome.
Genomic surveillance: What it is and why we need more of it to track coronavirus variants and help end the COVID-19 pandemic
“You can’t fix what you don’t measure” is a maxim in the business world. And it holds true in the world of public health as well.
Minnesota at forefront of COVID-19 variant surveillance
Public and private health labs sequence more COVID-19 samples in Minnesota than almost any other state.
The next phase of SARS-CoV-2 surveillance: real-time molecular epidemiology
With current massive genomic sequencing efforts, virological epidemiological surveillance is being performed near to real time. Mutations in the viral genome are also detected and shared near to real time, leaving the interpretation of their relevance for future work.
The next phase of SARS-CoV-2 surveillance: real-time molecular epidemiology
The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is the first to apply whole-genome sequencing near to real time, with over 2 million severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) whole-genome sequences generated and shared through the GISAID platform.
The US is way behind on tracking COVID-19 variants
It makes it all the more difficult to stop new infections.
To stem the pandemic, the U.S. needs a national Covid-19 genomic sequencing effort
For the Covid-19 pandemic to stay on a downward trend, the U.S. must optimize a national viral sequencing network that is scalable and based on regional capabilities for sequencing and public health intervention. Without such efforts, Covid-19 infections could again move through communities without adequate public health knowledge of what is happening, and why. This places society at great risk of going back to square one in the battle against this pandemic.
U.S. races to detect and track omicron, hampered by an unwieldy surveillance system
"There's a reason we haven't heard of something called the United States variant, and it's not because it doesn't exist. It's because we just don't detect these things early," says Dr. Kavita Patel, a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution and physician practicing in Washington, D.C. "They're picked up in other places that tend to have better surveillance systems."
Why Didn’t the U.S. Detect Omicron Cases Sooner?
Genomic surveillance has improved enormously in recent months, but the system has built-in delays, and blind spots remain.
Why the US may not see the next dangerous coronavirus variant coming
The US lags behind on yet another tool to end the pandemic: viral genetic sequencing.
Francis deSouza on the need for a global “Bio Force” to track viruses
Continual genetic monitoring of viruses and mutations can help overcome the covid-19 crisis and prevent the next pandemic.
CovGen
Sequencing SARS-CoV-2 in the Americas.
COVIDNet
The California SARS-CoV-2 Whole Genome Sequencing Initiative called COVIDNet is an unprecedented public-private partnership to provide California with genomic sequencing data for epidemiological efforts to control the spread of COVID-19.
CDC
As CDC and public health partners sequence more SARS-CoV-2 genomes, we will improve our understanding of which variants are circulating in the US, how quickly variants emerge, and which variants are the most important to characterize and track in terms of health.
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