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. 2021 Apr 28;13(5):775.
doi: 10.3390/v13050775.

Global Discrepancies between Numbers of Available SARS-CoV-2 Genomes and Human Development Indexes at Country Scales

Philippe Colson  1   2 , Didier Raoult  1   2
Affiliations

Global Discrepancies between Numbers of Available SARS-CoV-2 Genomes and Human Development Indexes at Country Scales

Philippe Colson et al. Viruses. .

Abstract

It has now been over a year since SARS-CoV-2 first emerged in China, in December 2019, and it has spread rapidly around the world. Some variants are currently considered of great concern. We aimed to analyze the numbers of SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences obtained in different countries worldwide until January 2021. On 28 January 2021, we downloaded the deposited genome sequence origin from the GISAID database, and from the "Our world in data" website we downloaded numbers of SARS-CoV-2-diagnosed cases, numbers of SARS-CoV-2-associated deaths, population size, life expectancy, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, and human development index per country. Files were merged and data were analyzed using Microsoft Excel software. A total of 450,968 SARS-CoV-2 genomes originating from 135 countries on the 5 continents were available. When considering the 19 countries for which the number of genomes per 100 deaths was >100, six were in Europe, while eight were in Asia, three were in Oceania and two were in Africa. Six (30%) of these countries are beyond rank 75, regarding the human development index and four (20%) are beyond rank 80 regarding GDP per capita. Moreover, the comparisons of the number of genomes sequenced per 100 deaths to the human development index by country show that some Western European countries have released similar or lower numbers of genomes than many African or Asian countries with a lower human development index. Previous data highlight great discrepancies between the numbers of available SARS-CoV-2 genomes per 100 cases and deaths and the ranking of countries regarding wealth and development.

Keywords: SARS-CoV-2; country-scale development; genome; next-generation sequencing; variant; world.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Numbers of SARS-CoV-2 genomes per 100 SARS-CoV-2-diagnosed cases (left, orange) and per 100 SARS-CoV-2-associated deaths (right, blue) according to countries.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Number of SARS-CoV-2 genomes per 100 SARS-CoV-2-associated deaths according to continent/region. Median value for each region is indicated by a light blue horizontal bar.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Number of SARS-CoV-2 genomes per 100 SARS-CoV-2-associated deaths vs. human development index.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Number of SARS-CoV-2 genomes per 100 SARS-CoV-2-associated deaths vs. gross domestic product per capita (GDP).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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