CARPHA, the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency, will in­cor­po­rate whole genome se­quenc­ing (WGS) test­ing to de­tect COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) vari­ants, from Mon­day 15th No­vem­ber 2021, at the CARPHA Med­ical Mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry (CMML). 

An ad­vi­so­ry from CARPHA ex­plains that the process will al­low CMML to mon­i­tor COVID-19 and track spe­cif­ic mu­ta­tions of COVID-19 that have been cir­cu­lat­ing in CARPHA Mem­ber States.  CARPHA says this new ser­vice will pro­vide a turn­around time of 14 days af­ter re­ceipt of sam­ples by CMML from Mem­ber States.

“The whole genome se­quenc­ing process will al­low the CMML to de­tect changes that may oc­cur in the COVID-19 virus fin­ger­print over time and ac­cel­er­ate the de­liv­ery of re­sults to Mem­ber States.  A bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the virus’s ge­net­ic make­up could save lives by in­form­ing pub­lic health and clin­i­cal man­age­ment, as well as sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of med­i­cines and vac­cines to com­bat the virus,” stat­ed Dr. Lisa In­dar, Di­rec­tor of Sur­veil­lance, Dis­ease Pre­ven­tion and Con­trol at CARPHA.

“CARPHA is pleased and very grate­ful that our In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Part­ner, the World Bank, sup­port­ed the ex­pan­sion of the suite of ser­vices that we can of­fer our Mem­ber States in bol­ster­ing their fight against COVID-19,” stat­ed Dr Joy St. John, CARPHA’s Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor.

The CARPHA ad­vi­so­ry ex­plains that each virus has its own ge­nom­ic se­quence, char­ac­ter­ized by a unique “fin­ger­print”. Whole genome se­quenc­ing (WGS) is the most com­pre­hen­sive method for ge­net­ic dis­ease test­ing and can de­tect near­ly all types of dis­ease-caus­ing ge­net­ic vari­ants.

As a virus evolves, ran­dom changes or mu­ta­tions oc­cur. These changes can lead to the emer­gence of a new virus lin­eage, which is quite com­mon. The ge­nom­ic se­quences of these new lin­eages will dif­fer and are re­ferred to as vari­a­tions. Al­though many vari­ants have lit­tle ef­fect on the virus's abil­i­ty to prop­a­gate or cause dis­ease, some changes can in­crease trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty, or al­low the virus to evade nat­ur­al or vac­cine-in­duced im­mu­ni­ty.

As the re­gion­al ref­er­ence lab­o­ra­to­ry, the CMML con­tin­ues to con­duct tests for sus­pect­ed COVID-19 cas­es and pro­vide time­ly re­port­ing of lab­o­ra­to­ry re­sults to its Mem­ber States. The CMML boasts a turn­around time of 48 hours for PCR test re­sults for Mem­ber States.

From De­cem­ber 2020 un­til the present, CARPHA and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) em­barked on a joint project to de­ter­mine the dif­fer­ent lin­eages of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that cir­cu­late in the Caribbean. UWI will con­tin­ue test­ing sam­ples, and fur­ther com­mu­ni­ca­tion with our Mem­ber States will de­ter­mine how many sam­ples they can ac­com­mo­date.

The CMML has plans to ex­pand the scope of its gene se­quenc­ing ser­vices to in­clude lab­o­ra­to­ry sur­veil­lance of oth­er types of virus­es and dis­eases of pub­lic health con­cern.

CARPHA al­so an­nounced its new ser­vice dur­ing the vir­tu­al 35th Caribbean Ex­pand­ed Pro­gramme on Im­mu­niza­tion (EPI) Man­agers' Meet­ing, which took place from 3rd – 5th No­vem­ber 2021. The meet­ing was host­ed by the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO).