Who created the dashboard?

This dashboard was created as part of the Alaska SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing Consortium which is an partnership between the University of Alaska, Alaska State Virology Lab, Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, and other state agencies with the aim to increase genomic surveillance of variants of concern (VOC), variants of interest (VOI), and variants being monitored (VBM) in the state of Alaska.

What is the significance of the variants dashboard?

Coronavirus variants have the potential to spread more rapidly, cause more severe disease, evade diagnostic detection, or reduce vaccine efficacy. With emergency use authorization (EUA) of monoclonal antibody treatments, which are targeted towards particular variants, this data can help guide what treatment to give patients by helping determine what variant patients are most likely infected with. Timely and accurate surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 variants is key to informing public health policy and thus efforts to control the pandemic in Alaska.

Where does the data come from?

On this dashboard you can find updates on a weekly basis on variants circulating in the state of Alaska based on data found in GISAID. Lineages are assigned using Pangolin. To see how proportions of lineages in Alaska compare to national levels go to the CDC’s Variant Proportions page.

How to interpret SARS-CoV-2 Variant Dashboard?

Data used for this dashboard relies on viral sequences that are shared via the GISAID Initiative, thus we rely on the accuracy of the data deposited there. Sequences are a subsample of the total number of Alaska confirmed SARS-CoV-2 cases. Although sequencing efforts aim to capture as many samples as possible, samples are often biased as a result of priority sampling for a single cluster in an outbreak, unique cases such as vaccine breakthroughs, cases imported through travel, etc. Moreover, there is a lag (often weeks) for all sequencing data between when the sample was collected from the patient, processed, sequenced, and released to the public in the form of the dashboard. Thus data shown here contains few recent samples.

Contact Us!

The Variants Dashboard is maintained by:

  • Bevyn Cover, BS
    • email: bacover@alaska.edu
  • Devin M. Drown, PhD

This work is prepared by the Alaska Sequencing Consortium, including:

  • Devin M. Drown 1, Jayme Parker 2, Lisa Smith 2, Eric Bortz 3, Jack Chen 1,2
    • 1 Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK 99775
    • 2 Department of Health and Social Services, Division of Public Health, Section of Laboratories
    • 3 Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alaska Anchorage, Anchorage, AK 99508
  • Correspondences: dmdrown@alaska.edu j.chen@alaska.edu jayme.parker@alaska.gov

This work is supported by Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Prevention and Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases (ELC) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Alaska INBRE, an Institutional Development Award (IDeA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under grant number 2P20GM103395.