How the CDC plans to track the mutating coronavirus
Having more sequenced samples of SARS-CoV-2 will help epidemiologists and others in the public health field better understand the profile of different strains of SARS-CoV-2, and track their spread. (NIAID/)An initiative spearheaded by the Centers for Disease Control’s Office of Advanced Molecular Detection (OAMD) seeks to bring the SARS-CoV-2 sequencing work of private and academic labs into the public sphere. They hope this will help to coordinate cross-country efforts to better understand the virus’s genome and all its current and potential future mutations. Known as the SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing for Public Health Emergency Response, Epidemiology and Surveillance (SPHERES), the consortium of about 50 laboratories represent the majority of the United States’s almost 4000 genome submissions to GISAID, an international repository of viral data that provides open access to the genomes while preserving the intellectual property rights of sequencers. Going forward, they hope to submit many more sequenced viral whole genomes, including...