{"id":181508,"date":"2021-02-17T22:22:37","date_gmt":"2021-02-17T19:22:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/covid-19-bill-would-scale-up-ability-to-spot-virus-mutations\/"},"modified":"2021-02-17T22:22:37","modified_gmt":"2021-02-17T19:22:37","slug":"covid-19-bill-would-scale-up-ability-to-spot-virus-mutations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/covid-19-bill-would-scale-up-ability-to-spot-virus-mutations\/","title":{"rendered":"#COVID-19 bill would scale up ability to spot virus mutations"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#COVID-19 bill would scale up ability to spot virus mutations<\/strong>”
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WASHINGTON \u2014 US scientists would gain vastly expanded capabilities to identify potentially deadlier\u00a0coronavirus mutations<\/a>\u00a0under legislation advancing in Congress. A House bill headed for floor debate would provide $1.75 billion for genomic sequencing.<\/p>\n

The US now maps only the genetic makeup of a minuscule fraction of positive virus samples, a situation that some experts liken to flying blind. It means the true domestic spread of problematic mutations first identified in the United Kingdom and South Africa remains a matter of guesswork.<\/p>\n

Such ignorance could prove costly. One worry is that more transmissible forms such as the UK variant could move faster than the nation\u2019s ability to get the vaccine into Americans\u2019 arms.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got a small number of academic and public health labs that have been basically doing the genomic surveillance,\u201d said David O\u2019Connor, an AIDS researcher at the University of Wisconsin. \u201cBut there is no national coherence to the strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is trying to shepherd those efforts, aligning with the government\u2019s own advanced detection work, but the COVID-19 legislation would take the hunt to another level.<\/p>\n

Besides money, the House bill that cleared the Energy and Commerce Committee last week calls for the CDC to organize a national network to use the technology<\/a> to track the spread of mutations and guide public health countermeasures.<\/p>\n

In the Senate, Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin has introduced legislation that would provide $2 billion. Baldwin says the US should be using gene-mapp<\/a>ing technology to analyze at least 15% of positive virus samples. That might not sound like much, but the current rate is believed to be 0.3% to 0.5%. Analyzing 15% of positive samples would expand surveillance by at least 30 times.<\/p>\n

\u201cVariants represent a growing threat,\u201d said Baldwin. \u201cAt the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing our testing capacity was essential to our ability to track and slow the spread of the virus \u2014 the same is true for finding and tracking these variants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Genomic sequencing essentially involves mapping the DNA of an organism, the key to its unique features. It\u2019s done by high-tech machines that can cost from several hundred thousand dollars to $1 million or more. Technicians trained to run the machines and computing capacity to support the whole process add to costs.<\/p>\n

In the case of the UK variant first detected in England, the changes in the virus allowed it to spread more easily and are also believed to cause deadlier 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\u00a0Dr. Rochelle Walensky<\/a>\u00a0told governors on Tuesday that it could become dominant by the end of March.<\/p>\n

Sequencing 0.3% to 0.5% of virus samples, as the US is now doing, \u201cjust doesn\u2019t give us the ability to detect strains as they develop and become dominant,\u201d said Dr. Phil Febbo, chief medical officer for Illumina, a San Diego-based company that develops genomic sequencing technologies.<\/p>\n

The Biden administration has to \u201cset a very clear goal,\u201d he added. \u201cWhat\u2019s the hill that we are going to charge?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need that data. Otherwise, in some ways, we\u2019re flying blind,\u201d said Esther Krofah, who directs the FasterCures initiative of Milken Institute. \u201cWe don\u2019t understand the prevalence of mutations that we should be worried about in the US.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even more worrisome than the UK variant is a strain first detected in South Africa that scientists suspect may diminish the protective effect of some of the coronavirus vaccines. That variant has also been identified in the US in a limited number of cases.<\/p>\n

White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients has called US tracking of virus mutations \u201ctotally unacceptable,\u201d saying the nation ranks 43rd in the world. But the Biden administration has not set a target for what level of virus gene mapping the country should be striving for.<\/p>\n

At the University of Wisconsin, AIDS scientist O\u2019Connor said he and his colleagues started sequencing coronavirus samples from the Madison area \u201cbecause that\u2019s where we live.\u201d<\/p>\n

His colleague, virology expert Thomas Friedrich, said a national effort will require more than money to purchase new genomic sequencing machines. The CDC will have to set standards for state health officials and academic research institutions to fully share the information they glean from analyzing virus samples. Currently, there\u2019s a hodgepodge of state regulations and practices, and some of them restrict access to key details.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to look at this as a Manhattan Project or an Apollo program,\u201d said Friedrich, invoking the government-led scientific endeavors that developed the atomic bomb and landed humans on the moon.<\/p>\n

The United Kingdom was able to identify its variant because the national health system there has a coordinated gene mapping program that aims to sequence about 10% of samples, he added. Since that happened, there\u2019s been greater urgency about genetic sequencing on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe utility of doing this may not have been as apparent to as many people until these variants started popping up,\u201d Friedrich said.\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#COVID-19 bill would scale up ability to spot virus mutations” WASHINGTON \u2014 US scientists would gain vastly expanded capabilities to identify potentially deadlier\u00a0coronavirus mutations\u00a0under legislation advancing in Congress. A House bill headed for floor debate would provide $1.75 billion for genomic sequencing. The US now maps only the genetic makeup of a minuscule fraction of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":181509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/02\/virus-feature.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[93713,71464,1545,70510,9724],"class_list":["post-181508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-2-17-21","tag-cdc","tag-coronavirus","tag-genetics","tag-study-says"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}