Table 1 Empirical country sequencing capacities at different income levels and lines of inquiry enabled at each level

From: Global disparities in SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance

Income class

Median weekly genomes (when sequencing at all)

Mean weekly genomes (when sequencing at all)

Probability of detecting a lineage at 5% prevalence under mean weekly sequencing regime

Maximum probable prevalence of an undetected lineage under mean weekly sequencing regime

Lines of inquiry available

Low income countries (LICs)

5

10.32

0.403

0.217

Presence/absence of prevalent lineages

Lower middle-income countries (LMCs)

10

88.92

0.988

0.028

+ Quantification of lineage prevalence with some error; identification of preliminary patterns of geographic spread

Upper middle-income countries (UMCs)

17

147.30

0.999

0.017

High-income countries (HICs)

98

1717.01

1.000

0.001

+ Investigations of lineage dynamics, and transmissibility; high precision lineage tracking (molecular evolution and geographic spread)

  1. Countries at each income level have markedly different sequencing capacities, allowing for different degrees of epidemic resolution and lines of inquiry. Characteristics of each income class are shown in Supplementary Data 4.
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