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How the US Failed to Prioritize SARS-CoV-2 Variant Surveillance

Educational Objective
To identify the key insights or developments described in this article
1 Credit CME

The day after Christmas last year, as COVID-19 cases burgeoned at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, a colleague asked Eric Vail, MD, whether a virus variant first detected in the UK was fueling the surge. Vail, the hospital’s director of molecular pathology, didn’t know. So the colleague, whom Vail describes as a high-level person at the hospital, asked him to look into it.

Less than a week later, Vail was close to finding an answer. “The sequencer was loaded on New Year’s Eve at 11 pm,” he recalled in a recent interview.

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The day after Christmas last year, as COVID-19 cases burgeoned at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, a colleague asked Eric Vail, MD, whether a virus variant first detected in the UK was fueling the surge. Vail, the hospital’s director of molecular pathology, didn’t know. So the colleague, whom Vail describes as a high-level person at the hospital, asked him to look into it.

Less than a week later, Vail was close to finding an answer. “The sequencer was loaded on New Year’s Eve at 11 pm,” he recalled in a recent interview.

The results of his team’s genomic sequencing study surprised them. Out of a random selection of 185 virus samples collected from patients between November 22 and December 28, none matched B.1.1.7, the so-called UK variant. The smaller of 2 main clusters was the predominant SARS-CoV-2 strain. But the larger cluster, making up 36% of the samples, was something different—“a new variant that is homegrown California,” Vail said.

AMA CME Accreditation Information

Credit Designation Statement: The American Medical Association designates this Journal-based CME activity activity for a maximum of 1.00  AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Successful completion of this CME activity, which includes participation in the evaluation component, enables the participant to earn up to:

  • 1.00 Medical Knowledge MOC points in the American Board of Internal Medicine's (ABIM) Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program;;
  • 1.00 Self-Assessment points in the American Board of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery’s (ABOHNS) Continuing Certification program;
  • 1.00 MOC points in the American Board of Pediatrics’ (ABP) Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program;
  • 1.00 Lifelong Learning points in the American Board of Pathology’s (ABPath) Continuing Certification program; and
  • 1.00 credit toward the CME of the American Board of Surgery’s Continuous Certification program

It is the CME activity provider's responsibility to submit participant completion information to ACCME for the purpose of granting MOC credit.

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