US tracking of virus variants has improved after slow start

After a slow start, the United States has improved its surveillance system for tracking new coronavirus variants such as omicron, boosting its capacity by tens of thousands of samples per week since early this year. “We’re in a much, much better place than a year ago or even six or nine months ago,” said Kenny Beckman of the University of Minnesota, who credited federal dollars distributed to public and private labs. Omicron’s emergence could “stimulate the United States to do this better.” “I think we still have a long way to go,” Moss said. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said it is “inevitable” that omicron will make its way into the United States. University of Wisconsin AIDS researcher David O’Connor noted: “We don’t have the sorts of interstate travel restrictions that would make it possible to contain the virus in any one place.” Instead, genomic surveillance will tell officials if omicron is spreading unusually fast somewhere and whether more resources should be sent to those places, he said.