The CDC is now sequencing about 3,000 samples per week and expects to more than double to about 6,500 per week, according to Dr. Gregory Armstrong, director of the Office of Advanced Molecular Detection at the CDC’s National Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases and Zoonotic.
Scientists sequence the genome – the entire genetic map of the virus – to find mutations that could affect how the virus spreads.
British scientists found that a new variant of the virus was spreading there and say the pattern of mutations makes it more easily transmitted, although it does not appear to cause more serious illness.
It has now been found in at least 37 countries, including the United States, where cases have been identified in California, Colorado and Florida.
“It is important to monitor the virus and be able to detect these trends that have implications for public health and clinical medicine,” Armstrong told CNN.
To speed up sequencing, the CDC gave about $ 15 million to state health labs in December. In September and December, the CDC awarded about $ 8 million to seven university labs and expects to donate money to more university labs in the coming months, said Armstrong. He added that the agency also signed contracts with Illumina and Labcorp, two private laboratories, to do the genomic sequencing.
The United States has been criticized for not sequencing enough virus samples.
Since the start of the pandemic, the United States has submitted nearly 57,000 genomic sequences to GISAID, a centralized database used by countries around the world. In comparison, the UK had far fewer infections, but sent out about 141,000 strings.
Armstrong noted that the UK and some other countries have a more centralized system for doing sequencing, while in the U.S. several different types of labs – federal, state, academic and private – do the job.
“It’s a somewhat irregular system,” said Armstrong.
A World Health Organization official said the results are expected this week from laboratories studying whether the new variant first identified in Britain could pose a challenge for coronavirus vaccines.
Scientists in the UK and elsewhere have collected blood from people who have been vaccinated and are testing in the laboratory to see if the antibodies created by the vaccine protect against the new variant, according to Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical leader for response to the coronavirus.
They are also taking blood from people who have been infected with the new variant and testing it in the laboratory to see if the vaccine works well against it, she told CNN.
Pfizer and Moderna, manufacturers of the two vaccines authorized in the United States, are working in their labs to see if the vaccine is effective against different variants of the virus.
On Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the vaccine’s immune response was “very likely” to protect against the new variant.
The UK variant has 17 mutations, an unusually high number.
Scientists are also running tests to evaluate the vaccine’s effectiveness against a variant found in South Africa that has 22 mutations, said Van Kerkhove.