The origin and early spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Europe
Open accessPublished version of a preprint
Abstract
Significance: We estimate the origin and spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Europe prior to spring 2020 border closures based on viral genome sequences using a phylodynamic model with geographic structure. We confirm that the predominant European outbreak most likely started in Italy and spread from there. This outbreak was probably seeded by a transmission event in either Hubei, China or Germany. In particular, we find that before the first border closures in Europe, the rate of new cases occurring from within-country transmission was within or exceeded the estimated bounds on the rate of new migration cases.
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- Authors
- Nadeau, S. A., Vaughan, T. G., Scire, J., Huisman, J. S., & Stadler, T.
- Affiliations
- SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (CH)
- Corresponding author
- Stadler, Tanja
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2021-02-10
- Volume
- 118
- Issue
- 9
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC7936359
- OpenAlex
- W3128213721
- Cited by
- 93
- References
- 34
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 26 · 2021: 32 · 2020: 2
- FWCI
- 6.08
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- medRxiv (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Repository for Publications and Research Data (ETH Zurich) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- ETH Zürich Research Collection
- Funders
- Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (31CA30_196267)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Infectious Diseases › SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Research
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Modeling and Simulation › COVID-19 epidemiological studies
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Infectious Diseases › SARS-CoV-2 detection and testing
- Keywords
- SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 pandemic, viral migration, phylodynamics, viral genome sequence, transmission trees, border closures, Italy, Hubei Province, Germany
- MeSH terms
- COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, Europe, Humans, Genome, Viral, Phylogeography
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