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“We are not where we want to be in terms of genetic sequencing, although we are making progress,” the administration official said. “We are starting very late on genetic sequencing.”
In order to find new strains of the virus, scientists must genetically sequence samples – spelling out the letters of its genetic code and looking for changes. Coronaviruses are known to mutate, usually harmlessly to humans. But every now and then a mutation appears that could change how the virus works.
In the United States, scientists fear that the variants first identified in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil are more contagious, more likely to cause reinfection or somewhat resistant to existing Covid-19 vaccines.
The fear is that these variants may erase recent progress in reducing the number of Covid-19 cases. They could also raise the bar for the number of Americans who must be vaccinated to gain herd immunity.
An additional concern for the administration that goes along with the spread of variants, the administration official said, is coronavirus fatigue – and convincing Americans to continue to practice responsible public health behavior like wearing mask and social distancing a year after the start of the pandemic.
“It’s not exciting to say, ‘Wear a mask, keep your distance and get your shot when it’s your turn. “But these are actually the concrete steps people can take to stop this variant. It’s the quickest way to stop this variant,” the official said. “It’s tough. People are fed up with this. I’m sick of it. Everyone is tired of living in their own home and not seeing their family and not seeing their friends. “
In a White House briefing on Wednesday, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr Rochelle Walensky, said the variant first spotted in the UK was now responsible for around 1 in 4% of cases in the country.
“We don’t believe the variants are distributed evenly across the country at this time,” she said. Walensky did not provide estimates of the other variants first identified in South Africa and Brazil.
Last month, CDC modeling predicted that the UK variant, known as B.1.1.7, could become the predominant strain in the US by March. The agency estimates that it is around 50% more transmissible than earlier strains.
Experts say the South African and Brazilian variants are harder to find than B.1.1.7, because the latter causes a problem on some PCR tests – prompting scientists to take a closer look and preferentially sequence these. samples. For the other variants, it is often a question of random sampling.
“The South African variant has been recognized in a few states with only a few people, but it is most likely more prevalent than that because we don’t yet have the full sequential surveillance that we’re going to do,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Biden’s chief medical adviser, said during Wednesday’s briefing.
He added that this variant was “a bit more problematic” for what appears to be partial leakage of antibody protection. However, he also pointed to more encouraging evidence that vaccines can offer “substantial protection” against serious illness, hospitalization and death.
The United States has stepped up its sequencing efforts and is on track to process at least 7,000 samples per week, Walensky said. But she also echoed claims that more sequencing is needed to keep up with the spread of the variants across the country.
A CDC official previously told CNN that the UK and some other countries have a more centralized system for performing sequencing. But in the United States, several types of labs – federal, state, academic, and private – do the job.
Denmark, for example, launched an effort to sequence all positive samples from Jan.12, a spokesperson for the government’s public health institute told CNN last week. Previously, the institute, called Statens Serum Institut, had fully sequenced about 20% of positive samples from the start of the pandemic.
Only eight states have genetically sequenced more than 1% of their total coronavirus cases during the pandemic, compared to a national average of just under 0.4%, according to CDC data. Eighteen states have sequenced less than 0.1% of their confirmed cases.
Experts previously told CNN that the United States should aim to sequence 5 to 10% of cases, in line with sequencing efforts in the United Kingdom. Considering the cases in the last seven days, this would represent approximately 38,000 to 76,000 sequences per week.
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