Italy and Cyprus will resume use of AstraZeneca vaccine Friday

The United States is now sequencing 10,000 to 14,000 samples of coronavirus every week in its search for cases of new variants across the country, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Thursday.  

But even more sequencing is needed to keep on top of the spread of concerning new variants, Walensky told a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

“We’re now doing somewhere between 10,000 and 14,000 sequences a week,” Walensky said. “Right now, we really would like to be up at the 25,000 range.” 

The US is doing far less genomic sequencing than other countries, such as the UK, and the CDC said this means there’s not a clear picture of the spread of variants. The CDC has forecast that the more contagious B.1.1.7 variant will be the dominant version of the virus across the US by the end of March. 

What the CDC needs: Walensky said the agency needs the money allocated in the American Rescue Plan to step up sequencing capability. “The additional $1.75 billion is in fact essential to help fund jurisdictions for next genome sequencing capacity,” she said. “Not all jurisdictions have this capacity and we really do need to be able to scale this up across the country.”

Equipment is also needed to sequence samples, and trained staff are essential, Walensky said. “We need to develop a work force, so that people understand how to do genomic epidemiology,” she said. “That is not standard application. That is not what people standardly know and so we need to develop that work force.”