Early transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in South Africa: An epidemiological and phylogenetic report.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The emergence of a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, in December 2019, progressed to become a world pandemic in a few months and reached South Africa at the beginning of March. To investigate introduction and understand the early transmission dynamics of the virus, we formed the South African Network for Genomics Surveillance of COVID (SANGS_COVID), a network of ten government and university laboratories. Here, we present the first results of this effort, which is a molecular epidemiological study of the first twenty-one SARS-CoV-2 whole genomes sampled in the first port of entry, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), during the first month of the epidemic. By combining this with calculations of the effective reproduction number (R), we aim to shed light on the patterns of infections that d

SUBMITTER: Giandhari J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7273273 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature