How Software That Tracks Covid Variants Could Protect Us Against Future Outbreaks

September 14, 2023

(MIT Technology Review) – When covid-19 started spreading in early 2020, scientists quickly realized that tracking how the virus was mutating would be essential for public health as new strains emerged that put people at greater risk. Yatish Turakhia, then a postdoc at UC Santa Cruz’s Genomics Institute, helped develop a software tool called UShER to track these covid variants by placing them, within minutes of each new sample’s submission, on a family tree of all known SARS-CoV-2 genomes. 

The tool, which has been accessible online since 2021, now records more than 15 million viral sequences, and scientists add to it daily. It helps them and public health officials discover new strains, assign them names, and track their evolution. It also allows them to surveil the virus in real time on a global scale with a high degree of precision. (Read More)