Detection of a SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern in South Africa
By H. Tegally, Eduan Wilkinson, M. Giovanetti, A. Iranzadeh, V. Fonseca, J. Giandhari, D. Doolabh, S. Pillay, E. J. San, N. Msomi and 37 more. Nature, 2021
1,497 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Continued uncontrolled transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in many parts of the world is creating conditions for substantial evolutionary changes to the virus1,2. Here we describe a newly arisen lineage of SARS-CoV-2 (designated 501Y.V2; also known as B.1.351 or 20H) that is defined by eight mutations in the spike protein, including three substitutions (K417N, E484K and N501Y) at residues in its receptor-binding domain that may have functional importance3–5. This lineage was identified in South Africa after the first wave of the epidemic in a severely affected metropolitan area (Nelson Mandela Bay) that is located on the coast of the Eastern Cape province. This lineage spread rapidly, and became dominant in Eastern Cape, Western Cape and KwaZulu–Natal provinces within weeks. Although the full import of the mutations is yet to be determined, the genomic data—which show rapid expansion and displacement of other lineages in several regions—suggest that this lineage is associated with a selection advantage that most plausibly results from increased transmissibility or immune escape6–8. The 501Y.V2 variant of SARS-CoV-2 in South Africa became dominant over other variants within weeks of its emergence, suggesting that this variant is linked to increased transmissibility or immune escape.
Subfields: Infectious Diseases
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/582212a28b3bb459cee7d62489dbcf9114e47d8b
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Infectious Diseases
Citations in the corpus
- Increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection associated with emergence of Omicron in South Africa (2022, neutral): “V2/20H) variant, which was first detected in South Africa in October 2020 (1).”
- Outbreak.info genomic reports: scalable and dynamic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 variants and mutations (2023, neutral): “Of these, Alpha, Beta and Gamma were estimated to have emerged between September and December 2020 [7,36,37] and were subsequently outcompeted globally by the Delta variant that was first detected in December 2020 [38].”
- Genomics and epidemiology of the P.1 SARS-CoV-2 lineage in Manaus, Brazil (2021, background): “351, first reported in South Africa (12) and lineage B.”