Increased transmissibility and global spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern as at June 2021

🤖 Plain-English Summary

We present a global analysis of the spread of recently emerged SARS-CoV-2 variants and estimate changes in effective reproduction numbers at country-specific level using sequence data from GISAID.

🔑 Key Findings

• Nearly all investigated countries demonstrated rapid replacement of previously circulating lineages by the World Health Organization-designated variants of concern, with estimated transmissibility increases of 29% , 25% , 38% and 97% , respectively, for B.1.1.7, B.1.351, P.1 and B.1.617.2.

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