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Competition to find the first certified Omicron brand in the US has been delayed due to the closure of laboratories during the Thanksgiving holiday, according to the chief executive of the world’s largest gene tracking company.
Francis deSouza, head of Illumina, told the Financial Times: “As the labs return after Thanksgiving we can see Omicron’s presence in the US, but there must be 24/7 in a row.”
Holiday delays are a recent sign that the US is lagging behind other developed countries in terms of using genomic sequencing to detect and adapt to new strains of the disease.
“Everything went smoothly during the Thanksgiving holiday,” said William Schaffner, chief medical officer at the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, a nonprofit organization. “If you asked me, ‘is Omicron already here and we haven’t found him yet?’ I would say ‘certainly’. “
The most evolved species of Omicron were first found in southern Africa and cases were known around the world, including in the UK, Spain and Canada.
The US has not filed a single case, not even President Joe Biden warned Monday: “We will soon see the effects of these new species here.”
While the US oversaw the rapid release of the Covid-19 vaccine, it left many other developed countries in limbo. diagnosing the disease and following good examples to identify differences.
Statistics from the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data show that in the past 90 days the US followed 5.8 percent of its models compared to 11.7 percent and 13.5 percent in Canada and the UK, respectively.
Some US countries are doing better than others. In the last 90 days Vermont has followed one-third of its models, while Alabama has followed only 2 percent.
DeSouza said: “The number of follow-ups varies across countries in the US. What can help is a global approach to effective prosecution in the US.”
Scientists say the rate has skyrocketed in recent months, in part because of a $ 1.7bn increase in Biden. But the spread is not the same as the region and the type of cases being investigated.
Bronwyn MacInnis, director of pathogen genomic surveillance at the Broad Institute, said: “The diversity of species is very good, but they are not the same across the country depending on their nature or evolution.”
Other follow-up work is being carried out by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which said its laboratories were operating last week.
But the vast majority are run by state health departments and training centers, which operate Monday to Friday and are usually closed on vacation.
The U.S. Department of Health states: “Currently, the US is selecting about 80,000 samples per week, more than any other country. We expect every Omicron appearance in the United States to be identified as soon as possible.”
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