When unusually severe COVID is seen, rapid identification-and-virus-sequencing are needed world-wide

On Thursday (Dec. 31), the World Health Organization posted a review on four SARS-CoV-2 variants identified in 2020 and related WHO activities and advice. While in 2020 none of these variants have proven to be more clinically severe, WHO states of the current South African variant: “at this stage, there is no clear evidence of the new variant being associated with more severe disease or worse outcome” even though “preliminary studies suggest the variant is associated with a higher viral load.”

In 2021 there will certainly be more coronavirus variants and some may cause more severe disease, as did the autumn 1918 pandemic influenza virus compared with the milder spring 1918 virus.

Thus, there is an acute need for proactive surveillance in all nations that explicitly focuses on rapid identification of individual patients, or clusters of patients, with unusually severe COVID-19 and provides immediate genomic sequencing of their virus to look for mutations that could explain the increased severity.

Identifying such virus variants would offer the world the best chance to lessen their predictable impacts on patients, public health, economies, and all-of-society.

Actionable steps once such a virus variant is identified are multiple, e.g., determining if new vaccines or antiviral treatments should be made immediately, what policies would be needed across society to slow the spread of the virus, and what measures would be needed to stabilize economies.