A team at the Wellcome Sanger Institute is developing a new method for monitoring genetic changes in respiratory viruses as they circulate throughout the world.
The project is working to roll out cheap, easy-to-use technology across the globe to spot the emergence of any new health threats and prevent large-scale crises similar to Covid-19. The system aims to pinpoint dangerous new variants as they emerge, allowing scientists to keep track of the evolution of a virus.
The technology will monitor a wide range of viruses including influenza viruses, coronaviruses and respiratory syncytial viruses, the researchers said.
“Britain was at the leading edge of the genomic surveillance of Covid-19 and was responsible for about 20 per cent of all the Sars-CoV-2 genomes that were sequenced across the planet during the pandemic,” Ewan Harrison, who is leading the project, told The Guardian.
“The knowledge and data we generated allowed us to track – with unprecedented...