Highlights

The figure reports the number of SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences available from the GISAID portal. Only countries for which 1000 or more genomes are available are represented. Blue: “novel” genomes, submitted between Jan 24th and Feb 26th 2021. Gray: genomes available in GISAID before Jan 24th 2021.

WHO [1] and ECDC [2,3] have recently released guidelines for careful monitoring of the spread of some specific lineages of SARS-CoV-2 that carry specific mutations that can confer increased infectivity or an improved ability by the virus to escape recognition by some antibodies (and therefore constitute a potential threat for the effectiveness of vaccines). The tables included in this highlight offer an overview of the prevalence and distribution of these lineages, as of February 26th in various European and extra-European countries, and in different Italian regions.
A comparison between different time intervals is provided to illustrate the dynamics of circulation and or possible increases/decreases in the prevalence of these lineages. Table 1 and Table 2 report data as obtained from the analysis of genomic sequences obtained between Jan 27th and Feb 26th, and between Dec 27th and Jan 26th respectively. Table 3 compares the prevalence of these lineages in different Italian regions in the last month (Jan 27th and Feb 26th), with the “global” prevalence, as measured on all currently available genomes. This was required as unfortunately, the number of available genomic sequences is still limited form some regions in our country.

WHO [1] and ECDC [2,3] have recently released guidelines for careful monitoring of the spread of some specific lineages of SARS-CoV-2. All of these lineages carry specific mutations in the Spike glycoprotein, that can confer increased infectivity or an improved ability by the virus to escape recognition by some antibodies (and therefore constitute a potential threat for the effectiveness of vaccines). This report provides an overview of the prevalence of these mutations of interest in our country. Data updated to February 5, 2021.

The figure shows the number of SARS-CoV-2 genomes, currently available in the GISAID database, for every 1000 reported cases of COVID-19 cased for the 20 Italian administrative regions. This is an important metric to measure our ability to rapidly identify new mutations or lineages of the virus and monitor its circulation on a geographical and temporal basis. Panel A shows the global situation. Panel B shows the situation of the last month (from 6/01/2021 to 5/02/2021).

WHO [1] and ECDC [2],[3] have recently released guidelines for a more attentive control of the spread of some specific lineages of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This report offers an update as of February 5th on the distribution of these variants in our country.

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