Global rates of sequencing COVID variants is low, but Australia and NZ among the best

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-03-29 02:00

Australia; International

Australia and New Zealand have a high level of routine COVID-19 genomic sequencing compared to the rest of the world, according to international research, which found a huge diversity in rates of genomic sequencing around the world. The study also found that the proportion of cases sequenced was low in most countries overall, with Australia and NZ both ranking among the best; sequencing over 15 per cent of cases. The authors say that given the potential for new variants to emerge in places that have low levels of sequencing, efforts to increase the sequencing capacity may help improve the detection and tracking of emerging variants worldwide.

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Journal/
conference: Nature Genetics

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Fudan University, China

Funder: This study was funded by Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant 82130093 to H.Y.), Shanghai Key Laboratory of Infectious Diseases and Biosafety Emergency Response (grant 20dz2260100 to H.Y.), Key Discipline Construction Plan from Shanghai Municipal Health Commission (grant GWV-10.1-XK01 to H.Y.) and the National Institutes of Health (grant R01 AI135115 to D.T.L. and A.S.A.; grant KL2TR001448 to D.B.D.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation or writing of the report.

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