Surging COVID-19 in Bangladesh driven by B.1.351 variant

  1. Eric Brum
  2. Senjuti Saha
  3. Ayesha Sania
  4. Arif Mohammad Tanmoy
  5. Yogesh Hooda
  6. Afroza Akter Tanni
  7. Sharmistha Goswami
  8. Syed Muktadir Al Sium
  9. Mohammad Saiful Islam Sajib
  10. Roly Malaker
  11. Shuborno Islam
  12. Nikkon Sarker
  13. Samir K Saha
  14. Shayan Chowdhury
  15. Yacob Haddou
  16. Elaine Ferguson
  17. Mikolaj Kundegorski
  18. Nabila Purno
  19. Motahara Tasneem
  20. Shams El Arifeen
  21. AMS Alamgir
  22. Anir Chowdhury
  23. Katie Hampson

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Abstract

A dramatic resurgence of COVID-19 cases and deaths in Bangladesh in March 2021 coincided with the SARS-CoV-2 B.1.351 (501Y.V2) variant of concern rapidly becoming the dominant circulating variant. Concurrently, increasing numbers of reinfections have been detected and the effective Reproductive number, R t , has doubled, despite high levels of prior infection in Dhaka city. These data support the prediction that acquired immunity from past infection provides reduced protection against B.1.351, and highlights the major public health concern posed by immune escape variants, especially in populations where vaccination coverage remains low.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.27.21255706: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    We estimated the effective reproductive number, Rt, over the course of the epidemic and for the B.1.351 variant specifically, using the EpiEstim package27.
    EpiEstim
    suggested: (EpiEstim, RRID:SCR_018538)

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.04.27.21255706v1 on medRxiv