Geographical and temporal distribution of SARS-CoV-2 clades in the WHO European Region, January to June 2020

Erik Alm (1) , Eeva Broberg (1) , Thomas Connor (2, 3) , Emma Hodcroft (4) , Andrey Komissarov (5) , Sebastian Maurer-Stroh (6, 7) , Angeliki Melidou (1) , Richard Neher (4) , Áine O'Toole (8) , Dmitriy Pereyaslov (9) , The Who European Region Sequencing Laboratories And Gisaid Epicov Group

1 ECDC - European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
2 Cardiff University
3 Public Health Wales [Cardiff, Royaume uni]
4 Unibas - University of Basel
5 Research Institute of Influenza, St. Petersburg, Russia
6 A*STAR - Agency for science, technology and research [Singapore]
7 NUS - National University of Singapore
8 University of Edinburgh
9 WHO Regional Office for Europe [Copenhagen]

We show the distribution of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) genetic clades over time and between countries and outline potential genomic surveillance objectives. We applied three genomic nomenclature systems to all sequence data from the World Health Organization European Region available until 10 July 2020. We highlight the importance of real-time sequencing and data dissemination in a pandemic situation, compare the nomenclatures and lay a foundation for future European genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2.

Keywords: COVID-19; Europe; NGS; SARS-CoV-2; WGS; nomenclature; sequencing

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]

Erik Alm, Eeva Broberg, Thomas Connor, Emma Hodcroft, Andrey Komissarov, et al.. Geographical and temporal distribution of SARS-CoV-2 clades in the WHO European Region, January to June 2020. Eurosurveillance, 2020, 25 (32), pp.2001410. ⟨10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.32.2001410⟩. ⟨pasteur-03139188⟩