Coming to America: Genomic surveillance and how B.1.1.7 arrived in the US

Xueting Qiu; William P Hanage; Bradford P Taylor

doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.04.031

Coming to America: Genomic surveillance and how B.1.1.7 arrived in the US

Cell. 2021 May 13;184(10):2532-2534. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.04.031.

Authors

Xueting Qiu¹, William P Hanage², Bradford P Taylor²

Affiliations

¹ Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA. Electronic address: xuetingqiu@hsph.harvard.edu.
² Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.

Abstract

In this issue of Cell, Washington et al. and Alpert et al. demonstrate the value of genomic surveillance when studying the introduction of the B.1.1.7 variant to the US and illustrate the challenge that results from the lack of good sampling strategies.

MeSH terms

COVID-19 / epidemiology*
COVID-19 / virology
Communicable Diseases, Emerging / epidemiology*
Communicable Diseases, Emerging / virology
Epidemiological Monitoring*
Humans
Metagenomics / methods*
SARS-CoV-2 / genetics
SARS-CoV-2 / isolation & purification*
United States / epidemiology

Supplementary concepts

SARS-CoV-2 variants