Exploiting genomic surveillance to map the spatio-temporal dispersal of SARS-CoV-2 spike mutations in Belgium across 2020

At the end of 2020, several new variants of SARS-CoV-2—designated variants of concern—were detected and quickly suspected to be associated with a higher transmissibility and possible escape of vaccine-induced immunity. In Belgium, this discovery has motivated the initiation of a more ambitious genomic surveillance program, which is drastically increasing the number of SARS-CoV-2 genomes to analyse for monitoring the circulation of viral lineages and variants of concern. In order to efficiently analyse the massive collection of genomic data that are the result of such increased sequencing effor... Mehr ...