NEW YORK – With mutants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus on the rise all over the world, some more contagious than the wild type and others dodging the just-released vaccines, genomic surveillance to monitor their spread is becoming more important than ever.
At the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology general meeting, held online this week, two genomic laboratories – one in the UK, the other in Canada – described their approaches for sequencing viral genomes from patient samples routinely and how they have used the data to monitor variants, analyze outbreaks, and guide policymakers.