It's been great getting to know Gage and Kat through our project together with @dho @tcfriedrich labs. Lost in the "US isn't sequencing enough" articles (which I agree with) are the success stories from academic labs across the country. Allow me to brag a bit about my team. 1/x https://twitter.com/GageKMoreno/status/1361446792328581122

It's all about the team, the team, the team (sorry folks, had to say it, I do work at the University of Michigan). The team is awesome. @itswillfitz @alvalesano, Chris Blair. Kat Miller joined from @MartinEpi lab. @Kalee_Rumfelt dropped a project to chip in. Now @sarah_arcos 2/x

We've also partnered with folks in our hospital clinical micro lab, our Univ biorepository, our Univ Health Services, Washtenaw Co Health Department, State public health lab. All necessary to coordinate sample flow and put data in context. Could not have done wo/them 3/x

These folks have been working non-stop since the Summer. It's amazing. The only think that seems to limit them is pipette tip availability. Nights, weekends, you name it. And no one has complained (at least not to me!). 4/x

What have they accomplished? By my count, we've processed about 3400 samples since the beginning of the pandemic. I think we've now uploaded over 1500 complete genomes to GISAID (many more that are < 97% complete). 5/x

It's been a bit bonkers since the New Year. With the arrival of B.1.1.7 in our area, we've increased our capacity and focused on turn around time to help define the contours of the outbreak and assist in its containment. Hasn't been easy. 6/x

It means working with lots of different flows of metadata, accommodating other information systems, etc. It's more than just nucleic acid and library preps. We've been lucky to work with great people. @MartinEpi in particular. Oh, sometimes it also means driving around town 7/x

Over 1100 samples processed or in process since January 1. I don't know the denominator for Washtenaw County, but I think we're sampling above 20% of its cases. Very proud of this graph of turnaround time from @alvalesano. High priority samples with collection-data < 7 days. 8/x

What have we learned? Hope to update you soon on what we've learned about B.1.1.7. Also some interesting findings from our analysis of fall term (spoiler alert, not everything in SARS-CoV-2 sequencing is about "variants"). 9/x https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/us/colleges-covid.html?smid=tw-share

Thanks for indulging me. Just had to say thank you to our ragtag genomic epi team and everyone who's helped us. I'm going back to work - and you should too! Fin. 10/x