Lessons for preparedness and reasons for concern from the early COVID-19 epidemic in Iran.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Many countries with an early outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 struggled to gauge the size and start date of the epidemic mainly due to limited testing capacities and a large proportion of undetected asymptomatic and mild infections. Iran was among the first countries with a major outbreak outside China.

Methods

We constructed a globally representative sample of 802 genomes, including 46 samples from patients inside or with a travel history to Iran. We then performed a phylogenetic analysis to identify clades related to samples from Iran and estimated the start of the epidemic and early doubling times in cases. We leveraged air travel data from 36 exported cases of COVID-19 to estimate the point-prevalence and the basic reproductive number across the country. We also analy

SUBMITTER: Ghafari M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8163697 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature