Just as with testing, the nation has failed to lead when it comes to using genome sequencing to track the coronavirus.
Source: Scientists have a powerful new tool for controlling the coronavirus: Its own genetic code.
One interesting takeaway: not likely that transmission at population-levels (countries, isolated regions, etc.) aren’t likely a single person brought it event. England used sequencing to determine ~1300 different sources, and mostly from Europe, not Asia.
“In one instance, researchers discovered that coronavirus was brought into the United Kingdom on at least 1,300 separate occasions — obliterating the notion that a single carrier had triggered the nation’s initial outbreak and showing just how easily the virus slipped through airports and across borders in the early days of the pandemic. The analysis also found that the vast majority of those early cases arrived from Spain and other European countries, rather than from China, where the pandemic began.”
