Genomic reconstruction of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in England
By
Harald S. Vohringer,
Theo Sanderson,
Matthew Sinnott,
Nicola De Maio,
Thuy Nguyen,
Richard Goater,
Frank Schwach,
Ian Harrison,
Joel Hellewell,
Cristina Ariani,
Sonia Goncalves,
David Jackson,
Ian Johnston,
Alexander W. Jung,
Callum Saint,
John Sillitoe,
Maria Suciu,
Nick Goldman,
Jasmina Panovska-Griffiths,
The Wellcome Sanger Institute Covid-19 Surveillance Team,
The COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium,
Ewan Birney,
Erik Volz,
Sebastian Funk,
Dominic Kwiatkowski,
Meera Chand,
Inigo Martincorena,
Jeffrey Barrett,
Moritz Gerstung
Posted 26 May 2021
medRxiv DOI: 10.1101/2021.05.22.21257633
The evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic continuously produces new variants, which warrant timely epidemiological characterisation. Here we use the dense genomic surveillance generated by the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium to reconstruct the dynamics of 71 different lineages in each of 315 English local authorities between September 2020 and June 2021. This analysis reveals a series of sub-epidemics that peaked in the early autumn of 2020, followed by a jump in transmissibility of the B.1.1.7/Alpha lineage. Alpha grew when other lineages declined during the second national lockdown and regionally tiered restrictions between November and December 2020. A third more stringent national lockdown suppressed Alpha and eliminated nearly all other lineages in early 2021. However, a series of variants (mostly containing the spike E484K mutation) defied these trends and persisted at moderately increasing proportions. Accounting for sustained introductions, however, indicates that their transmissibility is unlikely to have exceeded that of Alpha. Finally, B.1.617.2/Delta was repeatedly introduced to England and grew rapidly in the early summer of 2021, constituting approximately 98% of sampled SARS-CoV-2 genomes on June 26.
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