Prognosis
U.S. Falters in Testing to Detect Dangerous Covid Mutations
- Sequencing rate for U.S. is 32nd in world per 1,000 cases
- Not a public health priority, experts say, but that’s changing
Photographer: Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty Images
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The U.S. faces a steep uphill struggle in gearing up to monitor Covid-19 variants, a key part of watching for the emergence of dangerous mutations that might spread quickly, evade vaccines or kill more infected people.
Other countries, such as the U.K., have established robust, nationwide surveillance programs to identify new Covid genomes and track the spread of existing ones. But the U.S. has not: It ranks 32nd in the world for the number of sequences completed per 1,000 Covid cases, according to data from GISAID, a global database where researchers share new genomes.