Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in a medium-sized city with traditional communities during the early COVID-19 epidemic in China.
Virol Sin
; 37(2): 187-197, 2022 Apr.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1648554
ABSTRACT
The nationwide COVID-19 epidemic ended in 2020, a few months after its outbreak in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019. Most COVID-19 cases occurred in Hubei Province, with a few local outbreaks in other provinces of China. A few studies have reported the early SARS-CoV-2 epidemics in several large cities or provinces of China. However, information regarding the early epidemics in small and medium-sized cities, where there are still traditionally large families and community culture is more strongly maintained and thus, transmission profiles may differ, is limited. In this study, we characterized 60 newly sequenced SARS-CoV-2 genomes from Anyang as a representative of small and medium-sized Chinese cities, compared them with more than 400 reference genomes from the early outbreak, and studied the SARS-CoV-2 transmission profiles. Genomic epidemiology revealed multiple SARS-CoV-2 introductions in Anyang and a large-scale expansion of the epidemic because of the large family size. Moreover, our study revealed two transmission patterns in a single outbreak, which were attributed to different social activities. We observed the complete dynamic process of single-nucleotide polymorphism development during community transmission and found that intrahost variant analysis was an effective approach to studying cluster infections. In summary, our study provided new SARS-CoV-2 transmission profiles representative of small and medium-sized Chinese cities as well as information on the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 strains during the early COVID-19 epidemic in China.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Epidemics
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Observational study
Topics:
Variants
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Asia
Language:
English
Journal:
Virol Sin
Journal subject:
Virology
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
J.virs.2022.01.030
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