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How Louisville health officials are able to detect new variants of COVID-19

Kentucky is only able to sequence 3-5% of weekly cases, but Louisville public health officials have the technology to detect variants much quicker.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Detecting COVID-19 variants in our community takes a lot of work - and precision is key.

Cheri Miller, a laboratory technologist for the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness, said test samples go through three cycles of testing to ensure accurate results. The payoff of this elaborate process is knowing what's happening locally on a weekly basis much faster than if samples were sent to the CDC.

Once you take a COVID-19 test, the sample will go through a PCR machine to produce either a positive or negative result. All the positive results then go through a Mass Array Detection machine, which can detect certain variants.

RELATED: Local health experts: Both COVID-19 and flu cases in Louisville "are back to a steep incline"

Right now, Louisville labs aren't detecting the omicron variant, but the process does give clues to indicate that a new variant is present.

"It can still give us an early warning that there's something unusual in the population that this system can't call it yet but there's something unusual circulating," said Laboratory Director Dr. Leslie Wolf.

Dr. Wolf said her team hasn't detected any unusual variants, meaning omicron most likely isn't in Louisville yet. At this point, she said they are testing all of their positive samples and the majority are still coming up as the delta variant.

"Hopefully it'll change people's behaviors to know this is highly transmissible," said Dr. Wolf.

Dr. Wolf expects they'll have the equipment to look for the omicron variant by next week, but the testing is just for surveillance purposes since there's still no sure way for someone to find out what variant they have.

COVID-19 cases are on the rise, both in Louisville and Kentucky. During a press briefing Monday, Gov. Andy Beshear said the upswing is driven by the delta variant, which remains the main adversary in the fight against the coronavirus.

Contact reporter Kristin Goodwillie at KGoodwillie@whas11.com and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

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