Ginkgo Bioworks, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and XpresCheck by XWell have announced the expansion of the CDC’s Traveler-based Genomic Surveillance (TGS) program to new collection locations at Miami International Airport and Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
Additional program funding and expanded program scope, which will double the CDC’s current investment in the TGS program, will be used to substantially increase the volume of nasal and wastewater samples collected, tested and sequenced using a custom multi-pathogen panel. This expanded funding will bring the number of airports in the program to nine active sites: Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York (JFK), Washington Dulles, Newark, Boston, Seattle, Miami and Chicago.
Since its inception in September 2021, the TGS program has demonstrated its ability to serve as an early detection mechanism for new pathogens and fill gaps in global bio-surveillance.
The program has detected several novel strains of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19), using different sample types including nasal swabs collected anonymously from volunteer international travelers arriving at participating airports hosting mobile testing centers in terminals, as well as wastewater samples from airplanes and airport triturators. In October 2023, the program expanded to cover more than 30 viral and bacterial targets.
The first phase of multi-pathogen testing and sequencing in November and December 2023 proved successful, and the TGS program was able to detect positive samples containing several pathogens of interest, including influenza A and B, RSV and mycoplasma pneumoniae, a bacteria that causes pneumonia.
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