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Why US coronavirus tracking can’t keep up with concerning variants

The country has an enormous virus-sequencing capacity, but funding and coordination roadblocks are holding it back.
  1. Amy Maxmen
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As COVID-19 cases surge again in the United States, coronavirus variants are on the rise. But researchers fear that the country is ramping up surveillance of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 too slowly, allowing these variants — which evidence shows1,2 could make vaccines less effective — to spread undetected in one of the countries hit hardest by the disease.

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Nature 592, 336-337 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00908-0

References

  1. McCallum, M. et al. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.31.437925 (2021).

  2. Garcia-Beltran, W. F. et al. Cell https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2021.03.013 (2021).

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  3. Davies, N. G. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03426-1 (2021).

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  4. Vavrek, D. et al. Preprint at medRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.01.12.21249613 (2021).

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