Genetic evidence for the association between COVID-19 epidemic severity and timing of non-pharmaceutical interventions
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Unprecedented public health interventions including travel restrictions and national lockdowns have been implemented to stem the COVID-19 epidemic, but the effectiveness of non- pharmaceutical interventions is still debated. We carried out a phylogenetic analysis of more than 29,000 publicly available whole genome SARS-CoV-2 sequences from 57 locations to estimate the time that the epidemic originated in different places. These estimates were examined in relation to the dates of the most stringent interventions in each location as well as to the number of cumulative COVID-19 deaths and phylodynamic estimates of epidemic size. Here we report that the time elapsed between epidemic origin and maximum intervention is associated with different measures of epidemic severity and explains 11% of the variance in reported deaths one month after the most stringent intervention. Locations where strong non-pharmaceutical interventions were implemented earlier experienced 30 much less severe COVID-19 morbidity and mortality during the period of study.
Date Issued
2021-04-12
Date Acceptance
2021-03-10
Citation
Nature Communications, 2021, 12 (1), pp.1-7
ISSN
2041-1723
Publisher
Nature Research
Start Page
1
End Page
7
Journal / Book Title
Nature Communications
Volume
12
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Sponsor
Medical Research Council
Medical Research Council (MRC)
National Institute for Health Research
International Society for Infectious Diseases
Commission of the European Communities
Medical Research Council (MRC)
Identifier
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22366-y
Grant Number
MR/R015600/1
MR/R015600/1
NIHR200908
SBFF-2019-37324
101003653
G106266
Subjects
COVID-19
Communicable Disease Control
Epidemics
Humans
Phylogeny
Phylogeography
Public Health
SARS-CoV-2
Severity of Illness Index
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
2188
Date Publish Online
2021-04-12