US efforts to detect dangerous, fast-moving COVID-19 mutations that are already bedeviling states remain slim and disconnected as the Biden administration seeks to speed up the process. While as many as 7,000 to 8,000 samples are being analyzed weekly, that's just 1.7% of the 463,843 new cases in the US last week, making it little more than a random effort. Meanwhile, three highly-contagious variants have gained significant footholds in the country, with two showing an ability to evade - though not yet overcome - existing vaccines. State health departments directly send just 770 of the samples analyzed by US health officials, with the rest coming from academic, commercial and state labs. That can lead to over-sampling in areas where labs are located. And the academic labs often have little direct contact with local health departments that need to swiftly start contact tracing to control spread, said David Haussler, scientific director at the University of California-Santa Cruz Genomics Institute.