How does Mississippi test for the delta variant of COVID-19?
The number of people in Mississippi being tested to see if they have COVID-19 has risen significantly with the more contagious delta variant, and the state health department will use some of those tests to determine how the variant is speading.
Dr. Paul Byers, state epidemiologist, gave a step-by-step description of how Mississippi tests for all coronavirus variants:
▪ A person goes to their doctor or another medical provider or a testing clinic for a rapid test or a PCR test.
▪ Physicians are asked to send some sample to the state Health Department for sequencing.
▪ A system is set up throughout the state to perform virologic surveillance on that selected samples that are submitted to the Department of Health for sequencing to determine if they are a variant strain.
▪ “This is a very similar model that we use for virologic surveillance with other infectious diseases, including influenza,” Byers said. “And it’s a way that we determine what is the most common virus type that is circulating and causing illness at any point in time in the state.”
▪ The Health Department gets representative samples from providers, from community testing events and from all parts of the state and look at samples around outbreaks and in larger community testing.
▪ Those representative samples are sequenced in the state laboratory and partner labs to determine whether it’s a variant strain and specifically a variant strain of concern, such as delta.
“These are representative samples,” he said. “Not every positive person in the state is sequenced. It is only for a select number of samples.”
“So it is an estimate,” he said. This is how this type of surveillance is conducted nationwide.
“And this model that we use is the same model that other states use across the country,” he said.
In January, Byers reported Mississippi hadn’t identified any variant of the coronavirus yet in the state.
On Feb. 15, the Health Department reported the first case of the Alpha variant in Mississippi.
By June, South Mississippi saw its first delta variant case.
