> Early data from Scotland indicated that delta-infected Covid patients were 1.8 times more likely to be hospitalized than those with an alpha infection. Other U.K. data support the increased risk of hospitalization but do not provide clear evidence that delta patients experience more severe illness once in the hospital.
How do hospitals identify individual patients infected by Alpha, Delta or other variant?
Do they perform genetic sequencing of a virus sample from each patient, to determine what mutations are present? If they are doing statistical sampling, what percentage of patients are being sampled for variant identification?
It would helpful to have variant-specific numbers of cases and deaths added to national data, so that accurate graphs can be drawn for each variant. More granular data would support data analytics of local, variant-specific, policy interventions, to evaluate cause-effect on local health metrics.
Last I checked the US was sequencing about 1% of patients. In the Houston Methodist hospital system, they sequenced the viral genomes of 56% of patients, which they estimate is about 4% of Covid cases in the Houston metropolitan area: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000294402...
Of course, there is a sampling bias there for variants that result in hospitalizations.
Generally hospitals don't test for specific variants. Instead they forward a sample subset of patient specimens to regional or national infectious disease centers which then perform genetic sequencing. That way we can monitor the spread and evolution of variants.
Not every nation does this, mostly only the ones with socialized medicine are.
For nations like the US, we are measuring the variant by looking at sewage. It doesn't tell us anything about who ends up hospitalized, but it does give us a good indication of what the is the common variant in a community (and inferences are drawn from there).
The UK has been doing probably the most covid genome sequencing of any nation.
Thanks, good to know. Would be interesting if the UK also measured variants via sewage, as a methodological comparison against their more expensive individual sequencing.
How do hospitals identify individual patients infected by Alpha, Delta or other variant?
Do they perform genetic sequencing of a virus sample from each patient, to determine what mutations are present? If they are doing statistical sampling, what percentage of patients are being sampled for variant identification?
It would helpful to have variant-specific numbers of cases and deaths added to national data, so that accurate graphs can be drawn for each variant. More granular data would support data analytics of local, variant-specific, policy interventions, to evaluate cause-effect on local health metrics.