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Ongoing Battle Against COVID-19 Aided by Variant Tracking, Better Understanding of Viral Evolution
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As more people become vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, there is movement to resume normal every day activities. But many things still remain uncertain about the virus. Will it be tamed by the current array of vaccines? Or will these vaccines fail to keep pace with fast-evolving SARS-CoV-2 variants? And even if vaccines succeed initially, will they continue to protect us over the long term?
Questions such as these are unavoidable because SARS-CoV-2, like any other virus, will change ceaselessly to fulfill its sole purpose: survival. Essentially, SARS-CoV-2 has us caught between hope and worry as dramatized by this article’s sidebar (see “The Temper of the COVID-19 Response, in Three Quotes”).
Viral Evolution Insights Will Help Us Fight COVID-19 Viral Evolution Insights Will Help Us Fight COVID-19
In February 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the Emergency Operations Center at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shifted from flu surveillance to COVID-19-related tasks, which included clinical management, contact tracing, and communications. To help slow the spread of COVID-19, the CDC and other public health authorities also stepped up genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2. Currently, genomic surveillance is showing an alarming rise in the spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants.
Viral Evolution Insights Will Help Us Fight COVID-19
Pandemics will be more easily managed once we understand the mechanisms of viral evolution and learn to track variants in real time