[Adrienne Arsenault] Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto was the first in Canada to see COVID.
More than a year later it's a place transformed by the virus.
A busy day this time two years ago we may have been running 70 tests
for influenza or respiratory viruses a day.
Now, a busy day is 7,000 tests.
We've just done our one millionth COVID-19 test.
[Arsenault] The millionth COVID test was just processed over here.
Ward's full of COVID patients up there.
Research in that wing.
And yet to hear microbiologist Dr. Samira Mubareka tell it with the variants it all feels new again.
It does remind me a lot of you know March 2020 where and even earlier January, February 2020
where there are a lot of unanswered questions.
[Arsenault] Not comforting but nderstandable because the story of COVID like the virus itself is changing.
Not only does Dr. Mubareka's team study the original dominant strain.
Now they have to help sequence the genomes of 10 percent of all positive cases in the province.
They are hunting for the new.
We will soon be talking about a variant first identified in Canada.
I think you're absolutely right that as we test more we're going to find more.
There's no question this is something that we're actually quite concerned about
in the sense that we need to prepare for that possibility.
Hi, how are ya?
[Arsenault] Weekly, Mubareka joins genomics researchers from across the country.
Part of a network known as Cancogen.
Sharing everything they know.
How has the presence of variants of concern changed your lives?
I don't sleep anymore.
[Arsenault] Some of what all that work reveals surprises even them,.
Especially when it comes to some of the mutations that make the virus more adaptable, transmissible
and possibly more deadly.
What are the elements that make you sit up?
That should make the rest of us sit up?
For me hands down it's been certain mutations happening over and over again independently around the world.
That indicates that this virus is undergoing what we call selection
in that certain mutations are occurring that are really beneficial to it.
But these two viruses aren't connecting, they're not talking to each other?
They're independently doing this.
We think in some cases because they're interacting with people
and our immune system and they're making the same changes to adapt to our immune system.
To me the surprising part is not so much just how these flyers are mutating
but that the technology actually allow us to see this in real time.
[Arsenault] On that call Sandrine Moreira the woman who spoke of not sleeping anymore.
No wonder.
Quebec where she works is really busy.
It aims to store all its COVID positive samples in one location.
So far that's 150,000 of them.
That means the scale of the sequencing work is huge.
And they all know from international colleagues that there's danger in the mutations.
There is no new U.K. variant.
A new evolution of this variant with the South African mutation plus the U.K. one.
It's like the worst of both.
The mutation in the South African variant is one which is supposed to make the vaccine less efficient
so it's a kind of mutation that we don't want to miss.
And you have not seen evidence of that in Canada yet?
No, not yet but we look closely.
[Arsenault] It can take more than a week to get a full genetic picture of the virus and what story it tells.
It's almost a time stamp of the particular strain.
Where it's been, how long it's been around.
Next string a global crowdsource effort is mapping the mutations.
Some meaningless, some important.
Think of it the argument goes like rings on a tree.
Not many mutations in the beginning, so not many rings but more get added as time goes on.
You can count the rings and it tells you how old it is.
Yeah exactly, that's perfect.
We know that at the beginning we have seen like 10 mutations.
Now we have like 30 mutation in the viruses.
So it's evolving and we can see that.
So, for example, we have now the situation of people who are reinfected.
So infected a second time and so the question is is it a real reinfection so a different virus or is it the same virus?
[Arsenault] And as these teams across the country ramp up sequencing
expect to hear more on reinfections, more on mutations.
Maybe even new variants of concern.
The longer COVID is with us the more it learns how to survive and the harder the work to contain it.