While only two cases of Covid-19 infections tied to variants
have been confirmed in South Dakota, public health officials
are watching for more.
State Epidemiologist Dr Josh Clayton says they canโt check every positive test for the variants.
โB-117 variants as weโve identified possibly represent a larger transmission in the community cause we are not able to do genomex sequencing on all the specimens that are tested, this is a sentinel program to monitor emerging variants in the state and across the United States,โ Clayton said.
Scientists use these sequences to identify genes, regulatory instructions, or in the case of Covid-19, mutations to a virus.
Clayton says the variants spread more easily, and that overall infections have started to trend up slightly after weeks of declines.
The state is reporting just over twenty-two hundred active Covid-19 cases.
(Jerry Oster, WNAX, contributed to this report.)
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