On Jan. 5, 2021, Illumina and Helix announced a collaboration to augment national surveillance infrastructure in the U.S. to track the emergence and prevalence of novel strains of SARS-CoV-2 with support from the CDC.

The combination of Illumina’s sequencing technology and expertise and Helix’s national COVID-19 testing footprint significantly expanded the country’s existing surveillance efforts to detect and characterize emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2.