Regional importation and asymmetric within-country spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern in the Netherlands.
Elife
; 112022 09 13.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-2030291
ABSTRACT
Background:
Variants of concern (VOCs) of SARS-CoV-2 have caused resurging waves of infections worldwide. In the Netherlands, the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta VOCs circulated widely between September 2020 and August 2021. We sought to elucidate how various control measures, including targeted flight restrictions, had impacted the introduction and spread of these VOCs in the Netherlands.Methods:
We performed phylogenetic analyses on 39,844 SARS-CoV-2 genomes collected under the Dutch national surveillance program.Results:
We found that all four VOCs were introduced before targeted flight restrictions were imposed on countries where the VOCs first emerged. Importantly, foreign introductions, predominantly from other European countries, continued during these restrictions. After their respective introductions into the Netherlands, the Alpha and Delta VOCs largely circulated within more populous regions of the country with international connections before asymmetric bidirectional transmissions occurred with the rest of the country and the VOC became the dominant circulating lineage.Conclusions:
Our findings show that flight restrictions had limited effectiveness in deterring VOC introductions due to the strength of regional land travel importation risks. As countries consider scaling down SARS-CoV-2 surveillance efforts in the post-crisis phase of the pandemic, our results highlight that robust surveillance in regions of early spread is important for providing timely information for variant detection and outbreak control.Funding:
None.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
SARS-CoV-2
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Randomized controlled trials
Topics:
Long Covid
/
Variants
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Europa
Language:
English
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
ELife.78770
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