Wisconsin Laboratories Continue Fight Against COVID

Thursday, July 1st, 2021 -- 10:21 AM

(WMTV) As many people begin to return to normal pre-pandemic lifestyle, the fight against COVID-19 rages on inside Wisconsin laboratories.

At the State Lab of Hygiene, data scientists like Dr. Kelsey Florek, are sequencing as many coronavirus samples as possible. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, genomic surveillance or genomic sequencing is the process of decoding the genes of a virus to learn more about it.

Florek says this research is crucial to understanding what the variants are out there and how the virus changes over time. The researchers anticipate coronavirus variants will be tracked in the same way the flu variants are. Scientists believe the COVID-19 sequencing work will continue for years to come.

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