Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day three and
Speaker 1: nineteen since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's main story.
Speaker 1: Despite plenty of resources, the US is way behind the
Speaker 1: UK and other countries when it comes to identifying dangerous
Speaker 1: new variants of the coronavirus, and that has serious implications
Speaker 1: for fighting the pandemic. But first, here's what happened in
Speaker 1: virus news today. Snafi made an unusual deal to produce
Speaker 1: millions of doses of the Fighter and bio Ntech coronavirus vaccine.
Speaker 1: The French drugmaker set in a statement today it will
Speaker 1: give bio n Tech access to a production facility in Frankfurt,
Speaker 1: which will start to deliver doses this summer. The deal
Speaker 1: will produce more than one million doses for the European Union.
Speaker 1: Sanafi's own effort to develop a COVID vaccine has stumbled.
Speaker 1: The deal with bio n Tech allows Europe to make
Speaker 1: up for some of the loss. The pact also raised
Speaker 1: hopes that more pharma giants would throw their manufacturing and
Speaker 1: distribution weight behind the few coronavirus shots that have proved effective.
Speaker 1: A standoff between the EU and drugmaker Astra Zenica over
Speaker 1: vaccine delivery delays turned from bitter to chaotic on Wednesday,
Speaker 1: with the two sides disagreeing over whether a call to
Speaker 1: discuss drug delivery would take place. Later, both confirmed that
Speaker 1: talks will in fact resume as planned. It was just
Speaker 1: the latest in a series of clashes between the EU
Speaker 1: and the drugmaker. Finally, the Biden administration said it intends
Speaker 1: to increase orders for the two approved vaccines by the
Speaker 1: US government will order one hundred million more doses each
Speaker 1: of Fiser and Moderna's coronavirus vaccines. It will also speed
Speaker 1: up shipments to states, at least temporarily. And now for
Speaker 1: today's main story, the US is struggling to monitor COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen variants, a key part of watching for the emergence
Speaker 1: of dangerous mutations that might spread quickly, evade vaccines, or
Speaker 1: kill more infected people. Currently, the US ranks thirty second
Speaker 1: in the world for the number of tests it's done
Speaker 1: to detect mutations per one thousand good cases. I spoke
Speaker 1: to health reporter Kristin V. Brown, who reports that other
Speaker 1: countries like the UK have established robust nationwide surveillance programs
Speaker 1: to identify new covid genomes and track the spread of
Speaker 1: existing ones. The emergence of specific variants of COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: have been known for a while now, and obviously scientists
Speaker 1: always knew they were a possibility. But let's talk a
Speaker 1: bit about what mutations of viruses can do. How do
Speaker 1: they impact how infectious of viruses? And you know, the
Speaker 1: big question, will they impact the efficacy of a COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen vaccine? So viruses muta It's just something that viruses do,
Speaker 1: you know. That's why the flu vaccine is a different
Speaker 1: shot every year. So it might seem like a kind
Speaker 1: of arcane thing, right, Why does this variant that it's
Speaker 1: just a little bit different from another version of COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen matter? But it actually could potentially matter a lot
Speaker 1: depending on what the mutation in the virus is. So
Speaker 1: the current mutations that hob scientists concerned have to do
Speaker 1: with the way the virus actually gets into a person's body,
Speaker 1: and that is why they believe that these variants might
Speaker 1: be more contagious. But that could also potentially interfere with
Speaker 1: therapies that are being developed um or vaccines. Right, there's
Speaker 1: a big question right now, about whether these emerging variants
Speaker 1: might interfere with the efficacy of the vaccines that we're developing.
Speaker 1: And so you know what has specifically the US been
Speaker 1: doing to track, identify, or even sequence these known variants
Speaker 1: of COVID nineteen. So you brought up sequencing. How you
Speaker 1: detect these variants is through genetic sequencing, Right. You have
Speaker 1: to be taking samples from patients and you know, running
Speaker 1: them through this machine that can decode the viruses genome
Speaker 1: and tell you, okay, is this virus significantly different from
Speaker 1: other ones that we know are commonly circulating in the population.
Speaker 1: So the UK and many other countries have established really
Speaker 1: really robust genetic surveillance programs to sort of be on
Speaker 1: the hunt for this. The US does have a program,
Speaker 1: but it is not as robust as many other nations.
Speaker 1: At the time that we're talking, the US, I believe,
Speaker 1: ranks thirty second in the world for the number of
Speaker 1: sequences is completing per thousand COVID cases. And that's behind,
Speaker 1: you know, countries like the UK and Iceland that are
Speaker 1: really known for their genomic capabilities, but it's also behind
Speaker 1: countries that you don't really think of as leaders in
Speaker 1: that space. Like Latvia and Senegal. And so you know,
Speaker 1: we know that about two hundred thousand people in the
Speaker 1: US are testing positive for COVID nineteen every single week,
Speaker 1: But are these tests being used to track or as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, sequence these COVID variants. This week, the CDC
Speaker 1: told me that the US is sequencing about three thousand
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen samples every week. To put things in perspective,
Speaker 1: right now, the UK is sequencing about ten percent of
Speaker 1: its COVID cases and that number, that three thousand number,
Speaker 1: puts the US at less than point five. So we
Speaker 1: are not sequencing very much of the virus at all.
Speaker 1: And I mean, scientists have said that this effectively leaves
Speaker 1: us flying blind. We do not know what mutations of
Speaker 1: the virus might be out there are that pose a
Speaker 1: threat to to US and to our pandemic response. I mean,
Speaker 1: is this something that we're seeing in the US because
Speaker 1: of say a lack of interest on the federal level.
Speaker 1: What's some of the reasons here that the US is
Speaker 1: is so lagging in this regard. It's kind of complicated
Speaker 1: why the US has not had a robust sequencing program. So,
Speaker 1: like many things in this pandemic, the nature of our
Speaker 1: country has mean this a bit more complicated. Right, we
Speaker 1: have fifty different states. Things happen at federal level, at
Speaker 1: state level, local level, and that's what we've we've seen
Speaker 1: with sequencing efforts. It's happening at a constellation of public labs,
Speaker 1: of private labs, of academic labs, and there's not really
Speaker 1: a national program that connects all these things. So if
Speaker 1: you're a lab that wants to contribute to this effort,
Speaker 1: you have to figure out how do you get patient samples?
Speaker 1: You know, Script Research Institute, for example, they told me
Speaker 1: that they were able to get their program to do
Speaker 1: this work up and running because they already had a
Speaker 1: good relationship with the local health authorities, with the Sandy County.
Speaker 1: So it's a little bit of serendipity that has allowed
Speaker 1: these operations to to get up and running. And the
Speaker 1: lack of a national program that sets up protocols like
Speaker 1: where do you get the samples, how do you uh,
Speaker 1: what format does the data come in? All of that
Speaker 1: has made it harder to have a robust national effort
Speaker 1: in the US. And as we see the first days
Speaker 1: of the Biden administration, is this something that the administration
Speaker 1: has prioritized that we'll be seeing more sequencing going forward.
Speaker 1: So the Biden administration has said that it plans to
Speaker 1: prioritize this. It plans to up the number of samples
Speaker 1: that are getting sequenced every week, But we haven't seen
Speaker 1: any concrete plans discussed yet. And I think it's going
Speaker 1: to be a really big challenge because, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: it is a constellation of efforts that are public, private, local,
Speaker 1: uh statewide that are is doing this sequencing, and you
Speaker 1: have to figure out a system that can connect all
Speaker 1: of those things, and that will be a kind of
Speaker 1: gargantuan task. What are some of the additional benefits or
Speaker 1: the importance to this genetic sequencing, I mean specifically for
Speaker 1: other diseases beyond COVID nineteen. One thing that this pandemic
Speaker 1: has shown that I think is actually really sort of
Speaker 1: awesome is that sequencing can be a really powerful tool. Right.
Speaker 1: We saw very early in the pandemic. I believe it
Speaker 1: was in January we saw the first full genome of
Speaker 1: this virus published That allowed us to very quickly demonstrate
Speaker 1: how this virus had moved around the world, you know,
Speaker 1: what countries that had traveled from, and that allowed us
Speaker 1: to create policies that helped make our response more more
Speaker 1: intelligent and more efficient. Right, And I think that going forward,
Speaker 1: that same idea can be applied to many things. It
Speaker 1: can help us more intelligently respond to superbugs. It could
Speaker 1: help us respond to other future emerging zoonotic threats like
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen. It can help us to detect people are
Speaker 1: concerned about bio terror. It could help us detect potential
Speaker 1: bio terror threats too. So I mean, this technology is
Speaker 1: really important and has great potential to help us respond
Speaker 1: to future threats to our national security. That was Kristin V.
Speaker 1: Brown And that's it for our show today. For coverage
Speaker 1: of the outbreak for one and twenty bureaus around the world,
Speaker 1: visit Bloomberg dot com slash Coronavirus and if you like
Speaker 1: the show, please leave us a review and a rating
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Speaker 1: help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily
Speaker 1: edition is produced by top foreheads Magnus Henrickson and me
Speaker 1: Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Kristin V. Brown.
Speaker 1: Original music by Leo Sedrin. Our editors are Rick Shine
Speaker 1: and Francesco Levi. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's out of podcasts.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, Alo,