pushesanimals(andthe virusestheycarry)intocloser
proximitywithpeople.Andit couldhelptrainmorefield
workersinfar-flungplacesinsteadofrelyingonthecurrent
ad hoc system, in which a mix of nonprofits, universities, and
volunteers, along with the WHO, addresses emerging threats.
“Infectious diseases are like wildfires. You need to stomp them
out when they are containable,” says Anne Rimoin, an epi-
demiologist at UCLA. “In both cases, time is of the essence.”
Rimoin has worked on Ebola for years in the Democratic
Republic of Congo. There, the megacity of Kinshasa abuts the
world’s second-largest rainforest, which teems with virus-
laden animals. She’s been trying to build up an infrastructure
to respond to outbreaks, relying mostly on individual pri-
vate donors. Sometimes she scrounges for basic gear herself,
tracking down donated lab equipment in the U.S. then check-
ing dozens of extra bags on her flights to Africa.
- Genetic sequencing
Tracking and tracing a virus has typically been thought of as
a labor-intensive process that involves building lists of patient
contacts and then calling those people one at a time to see
who else might have become infected. Gene sequencing, by
contrast, offers the tantalizing possibility of tracking a virus’s
spread with molecular precision. Frequent, intensive viral
sequenc r quest
a givenstrainspreadswithina communitylikea schooland
whetherthestrainmightmutatetobecomeresistantto
existing vaccines.
Thanks to the ubiquity of high-speed gene-sequencing
machines, it costs only $50 or so to sequence a virus’s whole
genome. This information provides clues for contact tracers
about the pathogen’s path and allows the large-scale tracking
of mutations. Unfortunately, in the U.S. only about 3 in 1,000
Covid patients have had their virus samples sequenced. And
much of the work has been done in academic labs, which
are removed from the front-line facilities that have access to
detailed patient data and do the day-to-day contact tracing.
One of the current leaders in virus sequencing is the U.K.;
it’s processed more than 200,000 samples, about 5% of its
caseload. That helped Britain catch the B.1.1.7 variant, which
epidemiologists say could be more transmissible. Because it
was found in dozens of countries, it’s expected to become
the dominant strain in the U.S. The lack of virus sequencing
in the country “is a huge failing of our public-health system,”
says Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at Harvard. “Hopefully,
this will be a wake-up call.”
Biden has recognized the problem, announcing plans to
drastically build up sequencing capacity and choosing as“It’s not part of the world against
hil(dhi h )il dl“It’s not part of the world against
any other part of the world, but the world
against the viruses”41