22 February 2021

As Coronavirus Variants Spread, the US Struggles to Keep Up

Megan Molteni

The nation is a sequencing superpower. But without a federal strategy or enough funding, scientists can’t coordinate to track an evolving threat fast enough.

Across the US, the coronavirus is in retreat. The pandemic is still raging, mind you, with more than 70,000 new cases still reported each day. But since the post-holiday peak in mid-January, the seven-day average of new cases has fallen by nearly 64 percent. Hospitalizations have plunged too. And with vaccinations accelerating, there is a glimmer of hope that this downward trend might be the start of Covid’s long slide toward containment, at least in the US and other wealthy countries that are hogging the shots.

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