U of M Lab Earns Funding to Monitor For New COVID-19 Variants, Outbreaks

(KNSI) – The University of Minnesota has received funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to sequence 6,000 COVID-19 samples in the next year to help monitor for new virus variants and pinpoint case clusters.

The U of M Genomics Center will get nearly $750,000 to run genomic sequencing on the thousands of virus samples in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Health. The ongoing research, the university says, can help public health officials respond to new outbreaks of the virus and keep an eye on any new variants that could be concerning. The information gained through the sequencing effort could be used at the national and global levels.

“If there is suddenly a new outbreak to respond to, then we’ll be ready for it,” said UMGC director Dr. Kenny Beckman. “There are already experts suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 could become an endemic virus that changes and evolves over the long term, much like influenza. To have genomic surveillance in place makes sense as a way to become more proactive against these potentially deadly threats.”

The university adds that MDH will help identify which virus samples to sequence and that information that could identify which person provided the sample will not be recorded.

“This new resource not only will keep the momentum of the COVID-19 variant surveillance within Minnesota, but also boost the entire US central region states’ SARS-CoV-2 whole genome sequencing effort,” Dr. Sean Wang, sequencing and bioinformatics supervisor at MDH, said.

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