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Reconstruction of the origin of the first major SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in Germany.

Computational and structural biotechnology journal

Authors: Marek Korencak, Sugirthan Sivalingam, Anshupa Sahu, Dietmar Dressen, Axel Schmidt, Fabian Brand, Peter Krawitz, Libor Hart, Anna Maria Eis-Hübinger, Andreas Buness, Hendrik Streeck

The first major COVID-19 outbreak in Germany occurred in Heinsberg in February 2020 with 388 officially reported cases. Unexpectedly, the first outbreak happened in a small town with little to no travelers. We used phylogenetic analyses to investigate the origin and spread of the virus in this outbreak. We sequenced 90 (23%) SARS-CoV-2 genomes from the 388 reported cases including the samples from the first documented cases. Phylogenetic analyses of these sequences revealed mainly two circulating strains with 74 samples assigned to lineage B.3 and 6 samples assigned to lineage B.1. Lineage B.3 was introduced first and probably caused the initial spread. Using phylogenetic analysis tools, we were able to identify closely related strains in France and hypothesized the possible introduction from France.

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Research Network of Computational and Structural Biotechnology.

PMID: 35574268

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