US fails to track COVID-19 variants: report

LONDON - The United States has failed to develop a surveillance system that would allow researchers to watch for dangerous mutations of the novel coronavirus, a report by The Guardian said Tuesday.

To discover consequential genetic variations of the virus, like more transmissible variants first identified in Britain and in South Africa, research is essential, said the report.

However, as of Jan 29, the United States had only plotted and shared the genetic sequences of 0.3 percent of its COVID-19 cases, ranking 30th in the world, it said.

"It's just been a head-in-the-sand approach," Diane Griffin, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health was quoted by the report as saying. "It was really a failure of leadership."