Reported testing levels are now at their lowest point in eight months.
John Moore/Getty Images, disease surveillance efforts that rely on testing and variant sequencing have been critical tools in the global efforts to fight the virus.
However, as the omicron surge has receded, usage of those key tools, namely testing, has also declined -- a choice that has been a source of great concern for health experts as the more transmissible, omicron subvariant, BA.2, spreads across the U.S.UCSF-Abbott Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center lab director Dr. Charles Chiu demonstrates the process of extracting samples of COVID-19 for sequencing while working in his lab in San Francisco, Calif., Jan. 5, 2021.
"With reduced testing we have less visibility into disease transmission as well as virus evolution," Katz said."Certainly, the decline in testing we are seeing both in the U.S. and around the world is concerning. We are losing our situational awareness." MORE: US flying blind to potential COVID-19 resurgence, experts say, as states scale back on testing, data reporting
Wastewater will continue to be an important tool as a preliminary indicator of COVID-19 trends in the U.S. However, adequate genetic sequencing is also needed in order to identify new variants in the water.