American scientists would gain vastly expanded capabilities to identify potentially more deadly mutations of the coronavirus under COVID-19 relief legislation advancing in Congress.
The United States now maps only the genetic makeup of a tiny fraction of positive virus samples, a situation some experts liken to flying blind.
It means that the true internal spread of troublesome mutations first identified in the UK and South Africa remains a matter of guesswork.
Such ignorance could be costly. One concern is that more communicable forms, like the UK variant, could move faster than the nation’s ability to get the vaccine into the arms of Americans.
There are a small number of academic and public health labs that have basically been doing genomic surveillance, said David O’Connor, an AIDS researcher at the University of Wisconsin. But there is no national coherence in the strategy.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is trying to guide those efforts, aligning with the government’s own advanced detection work, but COVID-19 legislation would take the search to another level.
A bill passed for debate last week by the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce would provide $ 1.75 billion for genomic sequencing. Calls on CDC to organize a national network to use the technology to track the spread of mutations and guide public health countermeasures.
In the Senate, Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin introduced legislation that would provide $ 2 billion. Baldwin says the United States should use genetic mapping technology to test at least 15 percent of positive virus samples.
It may not sound like much, but the current rate is believed to be 0.3% to 0.5%. Analysis of 15% of positive samples would extend surveillance at least 30 times.
Variants pose a growing threat, “said Baldwin. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing our testing capacity was essential to our ability to track and slow the spread of the virus, the same is true for finding and tracking these variants.
Genomic sequencing essentially involves mapping an organism’s DNA, the key to its unique characteristics. They do this high-tech machines that can cost from several hundred thousand dollars to a million dollars or more. Technicians trained to run the machines and the computing power to support the entire process add to costs.
In the case of the UK variant first detected in England, changes in the virus allowed it to spread more easily and is also believed to cause the deadliest COVID-19 disease.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle reports that transmission of the UK variant has been confirmed in at least 10 US states. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told governors Tuesday which could become dominant in late March.
Sequencing 0.3% to 0.5% of virus samples, as it is doing now in the US, just doesn’t give us the ability to detect strains as they develop and become dominant, said Dr. Phil Febbo, chief medical officer for Illumina, a San Diego-based company that develops genome sequencing technologies.
The Biden administration has to set a very clear goal, he added. What is the hill that we are going to carry?
We need that data. Otherwise, in a way, we’re flying blind, said Esther Krofah, who heads the Milken Institute’s FasterCures initiative. We do not understand the prevalence of mutations that should be of concern in the US.
Even more concerning than the UK variant is a strain first detected in South Africa that scientists suspect could be at least partially resistant to some of the coronavirus vaccines. That variant has also been identified in the US in a limited number of cases.
White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients called the tracking of virus mutations in the United States totally unacceptable, saying the nation is ranked 43rd in the world. But the Biden administration has not set a target for the level of genetic mapping of the virus that the country should strive for.
At the University of Wisconsin, AIDS scientist O’Connor said that he and his colleagues began sequencing coronavirus samples from the Madison area because that’s where we live.
His colleague, virology expert Thomas Friedrich, said a national effort will require more than money to buy new genome sequencing machines.
CDC will have to set standards for state health officials and academic research institutions to fully share the information they get from testing virus samples. Currently, there is a hodgepodge of state regulations and practices, some of which restrict access to key details.
We need to see this as a Manhattan Project or an Apollo program, Friedrich said, invoking the government-led scientific efforts that developed the atomic bomb and landed men on the moon.
The UK was able to identify its variant because the national health system has a coordinated genetic mapping program that aims to sequence around 10 percent of samples, he added. Since that happened, there has been an increased urgency about genetic sequencing on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.
The usefulness of doing this may not have been so apparent to so many people until these variants began to appear, Friedrich said.
.
She is a freelance blogger, writer, and speaker, and writes for various entertainment magazines.