U.S. Needs Better Method to COVID Sequencing to Discover New Stress: Ex-FDA Chief

Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), suggested that genome sequencing efforts ought to be ramped up across the country in order to identify new pressures of COVID-19 prior to they multiply.

With infection anomalies emerging throughout numerous continents, Gottlieb reasoned that an emerging COVID-19 variation is currently present in the U.S. throughout a Sunday morning appearance on CBS News’ Face the Country

Following the detection of a preliminary COVID-19 variant previously this month, U.K. officials found a second anomaly ahead of last week’s holiday.

Dozens of countries, including the U.S., enforced limitations that manage travel to and from the U.K., after mutated virus sequences initially surfaced in the nation’s southern and eastern areas in mid-December. Citizens of London were put under a strict lockdown in an effort to reduce further spread.

Health authorities in the U.K. had the ability to determine COVID-19 anomalies, and draw a possible link between the variant strains and infection spikes taped in locations where they were detected, through genomic sequencing This procedure examines an organism’s hereditary product and offers a more total image of its biological makeup. Next-generation sequencing screens genomes for anomalies, and can notify early recognition of its variations.

The U.S. sequences less than 1 percent of all COVID-19 samples gathered, reported The Washington Post, a much smaller fraction than the majority of nations with active break outs. In the U.K., for instance, data shows roughly 10 percent of virus specimens are sequenced, according to the COVID-19 Genomics U.K. Consortium.

Scott Gottlieb, former chief of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said increased efforts to series COVID-19 samples gathered in the U.S. are required to identify possible variants throughout a Sunday interview. As commissioner of the FDA, Gottlieb affirms throughout a Home Energy and Commerce Committee hearing concerning federal efforts to combat the opioid crisis, October 25, 2017 in Washington, D.C.
Drew Angerer/Getty

Following his term at the FDA, Gottlieb signed up with the board of directors at Illumina, a biotechnology company that develops tools to assist evaluate hereditary variations, including technology to facilitate next-generation sequencing for COVID-19

” A lot of that sequencing that does get done [in the U.S.], gets done in private laboratories, and doesn’t get aggregated into public … databases. Doing so, he added, would allow the U.S. “to track modifications and new versions” of COVID-19 before infections become widespread.

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