TY - JOUR
AU - Aggarwal, Dinesh
AU - Page, Andrew J.
AU - Schaefer, Ulf
AU - Savva, George M.
AU - Myers, Richard
AU - Volz, Erik
AU - Ellaby, Nicholas
AU - Platt, Steven
AU - Groves, Natalie
AU - Gallagher, Eileen
AU - Tumelty, Niamh M.
AU - Le Viet, Thanh
AU - Hughes, Gareth J.
AU - Chen, Cong
AU - Turner, Charlie
AU - Logan, Sophie
AU - Harrison, Abbie
AU - The COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium
AU - Peacock, Sharon J.
AU - Chand, Meera
AU - Harrison, Ewen M.
PY - 2022
DA - February
TI - Genomic assessment of quarantine measures to prevent SARS-CoV-2 importation and transmission
JO - Nature Communications
VL - 13
DO - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28371-z
AB - Mitigation of SARS-CoV-2 transmission from international travel is a priority. We evaluated the effectiveness of travellers being required to quarantine for 14-days on return to England in Summer 2020. We identified 4,207 travel-related SARS-CoV-2 cases and their contacts, and identified 827 associated SARS-CoV-2 genomes. Overall, quarantine was associated with a lower rate of contacts, and the impact of quarantine was greatest in the 16–20 age-group. 186 SARS-CoV-2 genomes were sufficiently unique to identify travel-related clusters. Fewer genomically-linked cases were observed for index cases who returned from countries with quarantine requirement compared to countries with no quarantine requirement. This difference was explained by fewer importation events per identified genome for these cases, as opposed to fewer onward contacts per case. Overall, our study demonstrates that a 14-day quarantine period reduces, but does not completely eliminate, the onward transmission of imported cases, mainly by dissuading travel to countries with a quarantine requirement.
PB - Springer Nature
UR - http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/266212/
KW - Coronavirus (COVID-19)
ER