CONTINUING EDUCATION :: COVID-19 UPDATE


measures used to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2.30 However, as Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director- General for the World Health Organization, noted, the world will be living with COVID-19 for the foreseeable future.30 While we now have the basic tools needed to address COVID- 19—testing, treatment, and vaccinations, it is clear that areas of our surveillance, public health, and medical systems need to be bolstered. Vaccines importantly continue to prevent severe infections, however vaccine effectiveness against infec- tion wanes with time, new variants of concern can partially evade the immune system, and large populations around the world have not had adequate access vaccinations for SARS- CoV-2.31


While effective treatments have been developed for


SARS-CoV-2, treatments are costly, have supply-chain issues for availability and distribution, and a lack of awareness of treatments causes them to be underutilized.32


While many


testing modalities for SARS-CoV-2 which have been devel- oped including rapid testing and genomic testing, access to COVID-19 testing continues to be a problem, especially among the uninsured. Frequent and routine testing should be made available for the public to help guide public health measures to address local epidemics, and continued genomic sequencing is needed to assess SARS-CoV-2 mutations to monitor new variants of concern.


Conclusions The tools needed to address SARS-CoV-2 have been de- veloped; however, continued vigilance is needed as the frequency and distribution of SARS-CoV-2 transitions from a pandemic to endemic state. This study demonstrates that timely outpatient SARS-CoV-2 variant surveillance con- ducted by a private laboratory could be used to inform public health efforts to identify changes in SARS-CoV-2 strains in local communities. Government agencies should engage private clinical laboratories in the surveillance of diseases that threaten the public’s health to supplement national disease surveillance networks.


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