CDC-led study finds little evidence of UW-Madison dorm outbreaks fueling community spread | Higher education

The researchers also analyzed samples from 875 patients at UW Hospital and Clinics, accounting for approximately 3% of all county cases between September 1 and January 31.

That may sound like a small sample size, said Gage Moreno, another co-author of the paper who works in O’Connor’s lab and is doing a PhD. in this week. But consider the context: only about 0.1% of positive COVID-19 cases at the national level were sequenced around this time last fall.

Graduate student Gage Moreno works in Professor Dave O’Connor’s laboratory.

AMBER ARNOLD, STATE JOURNAL

In fact, Dane County is one of the most heavily sequenced counties in the United States because of the work done in O’Connor’s lab in collaboration with two other UW Madison Professors, Tom Friedrich and Shelby O’Connor.

Joseph Fauver, an associate scientist at Yale University who specializes in genomic epidemiology and was not involved in the study, read the paper at the request of the Wisconsin State Journal. He called his methodology “completely solid” and said 3% sequence coverage was above average.

Graduate student Gage Moreno uses a DNA sequencer in Professor Dave O’Connor’s laboratory.

AMBER ARNOLD, STATE JOURNAL

A unique mutation identified in a group of cases from Witte and Sellery was later not found in most of the county’s sequenced cases, leading the researchers to conclude that “there is little evidence that viruses from this group are found subsequently circulated with high frequency in the community. “