US rushes to catch up in race to detect mutant COVID viruses

NEW YORK (AP) — Despite its world-class medical system and its vaunted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States fell behind in the race to detect dangerous coronavirus mutations.

And it’s only now beginning to catch up.

The problem has not been a shortage of technology or expertise.

Rather, scientists say, it’s an absence of national leadership and coordination, plus a lack of funding and supplies for overburdened laboratories trying to juggle diagnostic testing with the hunt for genetic changes.

“We have the brains. We have the tools. We have the instruments,” said Ilhem Messaoudi, director of a virus research center at the University of California, Irvine.

“It’s just a matter of supporting that effort.”

Viruses mutate constantly.

To stay ahead of the threat, scientists analyse samples, watching closely for mutations that might make the coronavirus more infectious or more deadly.

But such testing has been scattershot.

Less than 1% of positive specimens in the US are being sequenced to determine whether they have worrisome mutations.

Other countries do better — Britain sequences about 10% — meaning they can more quickly see threats coming at them.

That gives them greater opportunity to slow or stop the problem, whether through more targeted contact tracing, possible adjustments to the vaccine, or public warnings.

CDC officials say variants have not driven recent surges in overall US cases.

But experts worry that what’s happening with variants is not clear and say the nation should have been more aggressive about sequencing earlier in the epidemic that has now killed over 450,000 Americans.

“If we had evidence it was changing,” said Ohio State molecular biologist Dan Jones, “maybe people would’ve acted differently.”

US scientists have detected more than 500 cases of a variant first identified in Britain and expect it to become the cause of most of this country’s new infections in a matter of weeks.

Another troubling variant tied to Brazil and a third discovered in South Africa were detected last week in the US and also are expected to spread.

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