Ever wondered if we can determine the rise in SARS-CoV-2 variants without classifying the variants beforehand? Proud to present our latest advances in genomic surveillance analyses that don’t depend on phylogenetic trees! 🧵 1/5 #pandemicpreparedness#SARS-CoV-2

2/5 Read all about it in our paper: pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... We estimate shifts in the viral fitness by looking at the genetic structure of the entire viral population over time, and show that we can detect the arrival of the major variants in this way.

Estimation of SARS-CoV-2 fitness gains from genomic surveillance data without prior lineage classification | PNAS

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants with increased fitness has had a strong impact on the epidemiology of COVID-19, with the higher effective repr...