Iowa struggling to analyze emerging COVID-19 variants

Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios

The State Hygienic Laboratory at the University of Iowa is receiving too few positive COVID-19 tests to reliably monitor the virus, making it harder for researchers to detect new strains in recent months.

Why it matters: Keeping track of emerging COVID trends and data can help health officials prevent surges and figure out the most helpful vaccines.

State of play: The state lab at the University of Iowa conducts genome sequencing on positive tests submitted by health facilities around Iowa. Sequencing helps with understanding how the virus is changing, Michael Pentella, director of the lab, tells Axios in an email.

The big picture: Sharing data has also become more difficult nationally after the federal government ended its emergency proclamation against COVID in May, Davida Smyth, a microbiologist at Texas A&M University, tells Axios.

Between the lines: Even if COVID tests in hospitals and doctor's offices are decreasing, Smyth says there's still one universal way of surveilling the virus: wastewater.

Zoom in: The ideal scenario is for states to be able to randomly clinically test populations for COVID-19, in addition to surveilling wastewater.

Whats next: As the public becomes less concerned about COVID, the big concern for the future is finding grants and funding to continue studying these topics and properly testing populations, Smyth says.

Editor's note: This story was corrected to reflect the name of the lab is the State Hygienic Laboratory at the University of Iowa, not the Iowa State Hygienic Lab.

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Iowa struggling to analyze emerging COVID-19 variants