ABSTRACT
After the spill to humans, in the timeline of SARS-CoV-2, several positively selected variants have emerged. A phylogeographic study on these variants can reveal their spatial and temporal distribution. In December 2020, the alpha variant of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), which has been designated as a variant of concern (VOC) by WHO, was discovered in the southeastern United Kingdom (UK). Slowly, it expanded across India, with a considerable number of cases, particularly in North India. The study focuses on determining the prevalence and expansion of the alpha variants in various parts of India. The genetic diversity estimation helped us understand various evolutionary forces that have shaped the spatial distribution of this variant during the peak. Overall, our study paves the way to understand the evolution and expansion of a virus variant.
Subject(s)
Severe Acute Respiratory SyndromeABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted several waves of infection in many countries worldwide. The large variations in case fatality ratio among different geographical regions suggests that the human susceptibility against this virus varies substantially. Several studies from different parts of the world showed a significant association of ABO blood group and COVID-19 susceptibility. It was shown that individuals with blood group O are at the lower risk of coronavirus infection. To establish the association of ABO blood group in SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility, we for the first time analysed SARS-CoV-2 neutralising antibodies as well as blood groups among 509 random individuals from three major districts of Eastern Uttar Pradesh region of India.. Interestingly, we found neutralising antibodies in significantly higher percentage of people with blood group AB (0.36) followed by B (0.31), A (0.22) and lowest in people with blood group O (0.11). This indicates that people with blood group AB are at comparatively higher risk of infection than other blood groups. Further, in line to previous reports we too observed that people with blood group O have significantly decreased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Thus, among the asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals with blood group AB has highest, whilst blood group O has lowest risk of infection.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Coronavirus InfectionsABSTRACT
Coronavirus outbreak is one of the most challenging pandemics for the entire human population of the planet Earth. Techniques such as the isolation of infected persons and maintaining social distancing are the only preventive measures against the epidemic COVID-19. The actual estimation of the number of infected persons with limited data is an indeterminate problem faced by data scientists. There are a large number of techniques in the existing literature, including reproduction number, the case fatality rate, etc., for predicting the duration of an epidemic and infectious population. This paper presents a case study of different techniques for analysing, modeling, and representation of data associated with an epidemic such as COVID-19. We further propose an algorithm for estimating infection transmission states in a particular area. This work also presents an algorithm for estimating end-time of an epidemic from Susceptible Infectious and Recovered model. Finally, this paper presents empirical and data analysis to study the impact of transmission probability, rate of contact, infectious, and susceptible on the epidemic spread.