Omicron Undetected in U.S. So Far, Testing Biden Sequencing Plan

Covid-19’s omicron variant is posing the first major test of the U.S.’s expanded system for monitoring mutations -- a key line of defense against potentially dangerous new versions of the virus that might spread quickly, evade vaccines or kill more infected people.

The U.S. is now doing far more sequencing than it was at the start of this year, when new variants of the virus first became a fixture of global concern. Public health laboratories are conducting as many as 20,000 full-genome viral analyses a week, four times the number from a year earlier, according to Kelly Wroblewski, director of infectious diseases for the Association of Public Health Laboratories. When combined with other sequencing efforts, including those of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. sequenced more than 90,000 Covid samples in the last week alone.