Concern over drop in Covid-19 sequencing reports
A woman receives a Covid-19 vaccine. Various non-pharmaceutical interventions have been implemented to slow down the spread of the virus.
What you need to know:
- According to the World Health Organization, the first sequence of SARS-COV-2 was shared three years ago.
- The WHO Director General Dr Tredos Adhanom says that the sequence was key in the development of the first Covid-19 vaccine and test.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has called on countries to strengthen surveillance, screening and rapid reporting of relevant data bases to help in assessing risks and effective response measures to Covid-19.
The agency has further recommended that countries which are currently facing sequencing difficulties to regularly send the necessary data to the designated regional reference laboratories.
This is following a drop in the number of countries submitting their virus sequencing reports especially in Africa.
While almost every country in Africa is able to conduct sequencing, the reports are often not relayed early enough to help with development of Covid-19 mitigation measures and the virus trends.
“We are encouraging countries to submit their data to WHO or a global database like GISAID,”said the WHO Technical Officer Laboratory Emergency Preparedness and Response Program Africa Region Rachel Achilla.
She said that once submitted to the global database, there are set up regulations to ensure the information is protected. She noted that Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal and Algeria are the five main contributors of sequencing reports in Africa.
“Currently we are seeing a lag. Although countries are carrying out sequencing of their samples, they are often submitted very late,” said Ms Achilla during a regional cross border cafe.
“The information is not received in real time and does not therefore give a clear representation of what is happening currently especially in Africa,” she said.
The health body recently published an assessment report of the new Omicron sub lineage XBB.1.5, which emerged in October 2022 and has since been reported in 38 countries mainly from the US.
Through sequencing, experts have reported that the sub lineage has a higher growth rate than the BQ.1 thus the increase in the number of infections in the recent weeks.
In the Afro region, cases are being monitored but due to low testing and sequencing, any new sub lineages take longer to be identified.
“We have very few studies with data because of the lower sequencing outputs from countries of the region,” she said.
According to the WHO, the first sequence of SARS-COV-2 was shared three years ago. The WHO Director General Dr Tredos Adhanom says that the sequence was key in the development of the first Covid-19 vaccine and test.
The world health body further states that sequencing and testing has helped in tracking the spread and development of new variants.
The number of sequences being shared from different countries has however continued to drop since the peak of the Omicron wave last year.
“When a country shares their sequencing report, it is not only for the country but for the world to be updated on the current happenings,” she concluded.
