Abstract

Late in 2020, two genetically-distinct clusters of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) with mutations of biological concern were reported, one in the United Kingdom and one in South Africa. Using a combination of data from routine surveillance, genomic sequencing and international travel we track the international dispersal of lineages B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 (variant 501YV2). We account for potential biases in genomic surveillance efforts by including passenger volumes from location of where the lineage was first reported, London and South Africa respectively. Using the software tool grinch (global report investigating novel coronavirus haplotypes), we track the international spread of lineages of concern with automated daily reports, Further, we have built a custom tracking website (cov-lineages.org/global_report.html) which hosts this daily report and will continue to include novel SARS-CoV-2 lineages of concern as they are detected.

Rights

© 2021 O'Toole Á et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Cite as

O'Toole, Á., Hill, V., Pybus, O., Watts, A., Bogoch, I., Khan, K., Messina, J., Tegally, H., Lessells, R., Giandhari, J., Pillay, S., Tumedi, K., Nyepetsi, G., Kebabonye, M., Matsheka, M., Mine, M., Tokajian, S., Hassan, H., Salloum, T., Merhi, G., Koweyes, J., Geoghegan, J., de Ligt, J., Ren, X., Storey, M., Freed, N., Pattabiraman, C., Prasad, P., Desai, A., Vasanthapuram, R., Schulz, T., Steinbrück, L., Stadler, T., Parisi, A., Bianco, A., García De Viedma, D., Buenestado-Serrano, S., Borges, V., Isidro, J., Duarte, S., Gomes, J., Zuckerman, N., Mandelboim, M., Mor, O., Seemann, T., Arnott, A., Draper, J., Gall, M., Rawlinson, W., Deveson, I., Schlebusch, S., McMahon, J., Leong, L., Lim, C., Chironna, M., Loconsole, D., Bal, A., Josset, L., Holmes, E., St George, K., Lasek-Nesselquist, E., Sikkema, R., Oude Munnink, B., Koopmans, M., Brytting, M., Sudha Rani, V., Pavani, S., Smura, T., Heim, A., Kurkela, S., Umair, M., Salman, M., Bartolini, B., Rueca, M., Drosten, C., Wolff, T., Silander, O., Eggink, D., Reusken, C., Vennema, H., Park, A., Carrington, C., Sahadeo, N., Carr, M., Gonzalez, G., De Oliveira, T., Faria, N., Rambaut, A. & Kraemer, M. 2021, 'Tracking the international spread of SARS-CoV-2 lineages B.1.1.7 and B.1.351/501Y-V2', Wellcome Open Research, 6, article no: 121. https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.16661.2

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Last updated: 28 June 2023
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