Partners in Crisis: The Infrastructural Pursuit of Genomic Pathogen Surveillance in California

• In Event: Science, Knowledge & Technology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4: (Infra)structures

Abstract

SARS-CoV-2 has now been sequenced more than 17 million times, with the U.S. contributing more sequences than any other country, making it the most sequenced entity ever. The mass and fairly rapid sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 did not seem like an obvious public health pursuit, does not have a precedent prior to the pandemic, and runs counter to longstanding neglect of public health infrastructures. In this paper, I ask how did the rapid and mass expansion of genomic pathogen surveillance—the process that generated the majority of these sequences—come to be pursued and made both possible and desirable in the face of longstanding infrastructural neglect? Bringing together approaches in social studies of health and biomedicine, critical global health studies, and STS, I take up this question by examining the formation of the California SARS-CoV-2 Whole Genome Sequencing Initiative (CA COVIDNet), a public-private-philanthropic partnership that was the first major effort in the U.S. dedicated to systematically sequencing SARS COV-2. Drawing on archival research using media coverage, published literature, and documents obtained through public records requests, I show how CA COVIDNet formed a novel infrastructure that institutionalized pathogen genomic surveillance. Novel actors entered into the public health surveillance landscape by helping to ‘solve’ problems of inequitable access to diagnostic testing and used this entry to opportunistically advance genomic pathogen surveillance. By focusing on key moments leading up to the formalization of the initiative, I trace how actors came together to form the interorganizational relations that would later have genomic pathogen surveillance occur through state contracting with philanthropic, academic, consultant, and industry ‘partners.’ I conclude by using this study to raise further questions about the significance of partnership formations for infrastructural work and how public health responsibilities once closely associated with the state are being continually reconfigured.

Author

• James Karabin, University of California-Santa Cruz