This article is a Preprint
Preprints are preliminary research reports that have not been certified by peer review. They should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Preprints posted online allow authors to receive rapid feedback and the entire scientific community can appraise the work for themselves and respond appropriately. Those comments are posted alongside the preprints for anyone to read them and serve as a post publication assessment.
Assessment of COVID-19 intervention strategies in the Nordic countries using genomic epidemiology
Preprint
in En
| PREPRINT-MEDRXIV
| ID: ppmedrxiv-21263123
Journal article
A scientific journal published article is available and is probably based on this preprint. It has been identified through a machine matching algorithm, human confirmation is still pending.
See journal article
A scientific journal published article is available and is probably based on this preprint. It has been identified through a machine matching algorithm, human confirmation is still pending.
See journal article
ABSTRACT
The Nordic countries, defined here as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland, are known for their comparable demographics and political systems. Since these countries implemented different COVID-19 intervention strategies, they provide a natural laboratory for examining how COVID-19 policies and mitigation strategies affected the propagation, evolution and spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We explored how the duration, the size and number of transmission clusters, defined as country-specific monophyletic groups in a SARS-CoV-2 phylogenetic tree, differed between the Nordic countries. We found that Sweden had the largest number of COVID-19 transmission clusters followed by Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland. Moreover, Sweden and Denmark had the largest, and most enduring, transmission clusters followed by Norway, Finland and Iceland. In addition, there was a significant positive association between transmission cluster size and duration, suggesting that the size of transmission clusters could be reduced by rapid and effective contact tracing. Thus, these data indicate that to reduce the general burden of COVID-19 there should be a focus on limiting dense gatherings and their subsequent contacts to keep the number, size and duration of transmission clusters to a minimum. Our results further suggest that although geographical connectivity, population density and openness influence the spread and the size of SARS-CoV-2 transmission clusters, country-specific intervention strategies had the largest single impact.
cc_by_nd
Full text:
1
Collection:
09-preprints
Database:
PREPRINT-MEDRXIV
Type of study:
Experimental_studies
/
Observational_studies
/
Rct
Language:
En
Year:
2021
Document type:
Preprint