Epidemiological characteristics of the B.1.526 SARS-CoV-2 variant
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
To characterize the epidemiological properties of the B.1.526 SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) variant of interest, here we used nine epidemiological and population datasets and model-inference methods to reconstruct SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics in New York City, where B.1.526 emerged. We estimated that B.1.526 had a moderate increase (15 to 25%) in transmissibility, could escape immunity in 0 to 10% of previously infected individuals, and substantially increased the infection fatality risk (IFR) among adults 65 or older by >60% during November 2020 to April 2021, compared to estimates for preexisting variants. Overall, findings suggest that new variants like B.1.526 likely spread in the population weeks before detection and that partial immune escape (e.g., resistance to therapeutic antibodies) could offset prior medical advances and increase IFR. Early preparedness for and close monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 variants, their epidemiological characteristics, and disease severity are thus crucial to COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) response.
Article activity feed
-
-
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.04.21261596: (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
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Our study also has several limitations. First, most of our analyses are based on population-level data without variant-specific information, given limited variant testing during most of the study period. We circumvented this data deficiency by analyzing estimates of a key subpopulation (e.g., the WHts neighborhood where B.1.526 was initially detected) and leveraging prior knowledge (e.g., estimated IFR prior to B.1.526 emergence). …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.04.21261596: (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
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Our study also has several limitations. First, most of our analyses are based on population-level data without variant-specific information, given limited variant testing during most of the study period. We circumvented this data deficiency by analyzing estimates of a key subpopulation (e.g., the WHts neighborhood where B.1.526 was initially detected) and leveraging prior knowledge (e.g., estimated IFR prior to B.1.526 emergence). Second, our study did not distinguish the two subclades within the B.1.526 lineage – one containing the E484K mutation and the other containing the S477N mutation. Both the E484K and S477N mutations have been shown to mediate immune escape;29,31-33 in addition, the percentages of these two subclades were similar during our study period, suggesting they likely have similar epidemiological characteristics. Lastly, there is a likely larger uncertainty in B.1.526-related and B.1.1.7-related IFR estimates for younger ages (those under 45), due to the smaller number of deaths and larger uncertainty in baseline IFR estimates. Future investigation addressing these issues is warranted should a large sample of variant-specific data become available. In summary, our study has reconstructed the early epidemic trajectory and subsequent rise of B.1.526 in NYC and estimated its key epidemiological properties. Findings highlight the importance of monitoring the viral diversity of SARS-CoV-2, epidemiological characteristics of new variants, and disease severity, as ...
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.
-