Tracking the spread and mutations of Coronavirus (COVID-19)

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In this video, we speak to Dr Thushan de Silva, Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Sheffield and Honorary Consultant Physician in Infectious Diseases about why we would want to sequence the genome of coronavirus and how it is useful for tracking the spread and mutations of the virus.

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Transcript:
As COVID-19 infects people around the world, it’s more important than ever to track the spread and evolution of the virus in order to guide and inform control strategies. But how do you track a virus?

Well, SARS-CoV-2 - the virus that causes COVID-19, behaves a little bit like a game of telephone – as the whispered sentence is passed from one person to the next, it might change ever-so-slightly! Data on SARS-CoV-2 show that it mutates at an average of about two mutations per month.. And we know this because scientists all around the world are collecting samples from patients with COVID-19 and sequencing the virus – reading its genetic code.

Leading the effort from The University of Sheffield is one of our Members, Dr Thushan de Silva. He’s a Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Sheffield and Honorary Consultant Physician in Infectious Diseases. He told us that as a virus travels within or between countries, it can mutate as it reacts to evolutionary pressure from localised populations. This can be due to immune responses or drugs active against the virus and can create slightly different strains. Over time, this could result in strains that are resistant to drugs, therefore it is important to track.

And even once we have a vaccine for COVID-19, continually sequencing the virus will still be vital in making sure that the vaccine is effective against all strains.

Dr. de Silva and his colleagues are part of a national effort to sequence the genomes of hundreds, perhaps thousands of samples each week over the next few months. In Sheffield alone, they’ve sequenced around 60 strains so far!

This data is then fed into a global database that can track the progression of the virus in real time! Rapid data sharing like this is key to understanding whether the virus is changing and how it is being transmitted.