Public Perception and Policy for SARS-CoV-2 Whole Genome Sequencing and Genomics for All

Implementing WGS, it is advisable to involve a variety of relevant actors and to consider the opinions of various stakeholders, including those who are not professionals in the field. This might resolve the implementation problem that could occur if psychological and social dimensions or, in other words, not strictly scientific criteria are not adequately integrated in decision making concerning complex issues such as innovations in genetics. In most cases, the reaction towards genetic information corresponds with a specific personal view of how to handle medical information and thus amplifies already existing mental phenomena (fear, stress, worries, etc.), tendencies of self-improvement and self-care and curiosity and playfulness.38 In the Study from Lewis et al, investigated in this relation the specific personality traits of participants of the first implementations of WGS, who were characterized as optimistic and resilient. This is a phenomenon often found in the group of early adopters of new technologies in general as described in the dimension knowing as empowerment to act, for some people, the willingness to know is caused by an attitude of openness towards the unknown and the desire to open new scenarios that could activate new opportunities for research as well as for themselves. This perspective highly reflects the currently dominant societal goal of health prevention and the main health policy discourse and practice of precaution. People have different perceptions of WGS and its imaginable integration into our health care system or our daily lives, and various approaches to decision-making regarding the potential use of WGS could be observed.

There are suboptimal national resources, inadequate specimen sampling strategies, to optimize epidemiological and clinical inference. There is a gap in the meta-data to interpret SC2-WGS information and other genomic sequencing (Gut microbiome, Genome Wide Sequencing for Prenatal Detection, Tuberculosis Metagenomic sequencing, Nutrigenetics and Cancer Next Generation Sequencing) in a complete and rapid manner. This understanding gap can undermine broad-scale government and public support as a routine part of the pandemic response, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

Therefore an intervention is needed in the form of genomic sequencing education. Before the intervention stage, there will be taking survey data which will be collected using the themes from the FGD results and will focus on assessing public perceptions regarding SC2-WGS and other genomic sequencing. These themes will be formulated into short statements and answered by respondents using a Likert scale. The survey will involve 100-200 respondents via WhatsApp chat bot. Subjects will be asked to express their reactions to short statements on a 4-point Likert scale. The subject will also be asked to express his emotional reaction to the statement with a series of binary questions related to positive or negative feelings. The survey results will be analyzed quantitatively to see the total score and distribution of each statement.

The next stage in this research is to develop social media and communication media. At this stage we will formulate public messages and strategies to improve perceptions based on the survey results. The public message formulated will be useful for educating the public using various social media platforms.

The intervention stage will be carried out by distributing information regarding genome sequencing via bots. After the intervention is carried out, changes in perception will be assessed before and after the intervention through pre-test and post-test questionnaires