NAT'L GEOGRAPHIC TELLS TRUMP: USE VIRAL GENOMIC SEQUENCING FOR COVID

Lois Parshley of National Geographic suggested that, instead of contact tracing, the White House should employ viral genome sequencing to determine how President Donald Trump himself was exposed to the dreaded COVID-19 virus.

Much of the focus has been on a September 26 event in the Rose Garden, where the president announced his nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the vacancy on the Supreme Court. The gathering has been described as a superspreader event, as at least a dozen guests have reported testing positive since and 34 White House staffers, housekeepers, and "other contacts" have been infected with the coronavirus, along with the president, the First Lady, a Navy admiral, and a number of campaign aides. “But Trump and his cadre may have been exposed before the Barrett ceremony, given social distancing and mask wearing aren’t always practiced at their campaign events. Using viral genome sequencing would not only help public health officials sketch the timeline of how the disease spread, but could convey whether the afflicted were exposed at various moments and places on the campaign trail, or all at once,” Parshley explained.

The virus that causes COVID-19 has a genome based on RNA, which like DNA, is made up of a sequence of chemical “letters” called nucleotides. As the virus raids cells and multiplies, it naturally makes mistakes when replicating its genetic code, swapping a few of those letters. “Imagine having to copy 30,000 letters by hand,” says Stephanie Spielman, assistant professor of biological sciences at Rowan University. ”You might make a mistake, and that’s what a mutation is.”

Once a mutation occurs, it remains in future copies, creating a lineage called a variant. Just swab a bunch of infected noses, compare the variants, and you can trace the origins. “If you have clusters of people with similar sequences, that’s a strong indication they had a common source,” says Joshua Michaud, associate director for Global Health Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. This procedure could even narrow down where in the country Trump’s contingent caught the coronavirus. National Geographic contacted the White House for comment but received no reply.