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DOE OSTI · 1659156

Tracking the SARS-CoV-2 Epidemic Using the Evolutionary Rate

Leitner, Thomas Kenneth
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Abstract

This project aimed to track the developing COVID-19 epidemic through measuring the virus evolutionary rate. This may give us a way to estimate the impact of prevention campaigns and other changes in the epidemiology that we otherwise would have difficulty to estimate. Based on our previous knowledge of how viruses are affected by their environment, we investigated how spread and prevention measures may affect the virus evolutionary rate. We found that SARS-CoV-2, which causes the COVID-19 epidemic, evolves relatively slow as compared to other RNA viruses. Thus, this makes it hard to see rate changes and track the spread at a fine scale. This did in fact mislead several high-profile reports in the early phases of the epidemic. We published comments and editorials in leading journals on this. Because the COVID-19 epidemic is till ongoing, and much data is still incoming, it is likely that evolutionary-epidemiological analyses will reveal important facts later on.

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Leitner, Thomas Kenneth. 2020-09-02. Tracking the SARS-CoV-2 Epidemic Using the Evolutionary Rate. https://doi.org/10.2172/1659156

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