A Q&A about the new coronavirus variant with the Fred Hutch scientist who’s been tracking its spread

 Q: The U.S. ranks 43rd in the world in the percentage of positive cases that are sequenced, and you were recently quoted in a New York Times editorial that called for a major expansion. Is anything being done?

A: The U.S. has sequenced and shared over 50,000 virus genomes, more than any country in the world, except for the U.K. However, the turnaround times have not been great. There are thousands of viruses that were shared in the database in December, but a great many of those were from specimens collected back in March.

The CDC has plans to (start) receiving specimens from the state labs and then doing the sequencing more centrally and share the data. So there are plans to have thousands more genomes sequenced every month, but I don’t know when that will come online.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/a-qa-about-the-new-coronavirus-variant-with-the-fred-hutch-scientist-whos-been-tracking-its-spread/