From escape mutations to wild strains: Here’s everything you need to know about Covid variants

From escape mutations to wild strains: Here’s everything you need to know about Covid variants

Dr. Ilhem Messaoudi, the director of the University of California, Irvine’s Center for Virus Research, said the process can be time consuming and labor intensive, but emerging strains will be missed if laboratories aren’t sequencing a certain percentage of all positive Covid-19 test results to find the new mutations, she said. “Now we’re trying to catch up,” Messaoudi said in a phone interview with CNBC. “We’re like, ‘Let’s go back and see if we have this.’”