Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Sep 9:12:919346.
doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2022.919346. eCollection 2022.

Tracing the trajectories of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern between December 2020 and September 2021 in the Canary Islands (Spain)

Laura Ciuffreda  1 , Rafaela González-Montelongo  2 , Julia Alcoba-Florez  3 , Diego García-Martínez de Artola  3 , Helena Gil-Campesino  3 , Héctor Rodríguez-Pérez  1 , Antonio Íñigo-Campos  2 , Isabel De Miguel-Martínez  4 , Tomás Tosco-Nuñez  4 , Oscar Díez-Gil  3 , Agustín Valenzuela-Fernández  5 , José M Lorenzo-Salazar  2 , Carlos Flores  1   3   6   7
Affiliations

Tracing the trajectories of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern between December 2020 and September 2021 in the Canary Islands (Spain)

Laura Ciuffreda et al. Front Cell Infect Microbiol. .

Abstract

Several variants of concern (VOCs) explain most of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) epidemic waves in Europe. We aimed to dissect the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 VOCs in the Canary Islands (Spain) between December 2020 and September 2021 at a micro-geographical level. We sequenced the viral genome of 8,224 respiratory samples collected in the archipelago. We observed that Alpha (B.1.1.7) and Delta (B.1.617.2 and sublineages) were ubiquitously present in the islands, while Beta (B.1.351) and Gamma (P.1/P.1.1) had a heterogeneous distribution and were responsible for fewer and more controlled outbreaks. This work represents the largest effort for viral genomic surveillance in the Canary Islands so far, helping the public health bodies in decision-making throughout the pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; Canary Islands; SARS-CoV-2; genomic surveillance; variants of concern tracking.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Geographical location of the Canary Islands with respect to the Iberian Peninsula and Northwest Africa.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Number of cases, sequenced samples, and the 14-day accumulated incidence (AI; continuous line) throughout the study period in the Canary Islands archipelago.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Proportion of variants of concern (VOCs) and the 14-day accumulated incidence throughout the study period for (A) the Canary Islands as a whole and disaggregated by island for (B) the Tenerife province and (C) the Gran Canaria province. Black lines depict the 14-day accumulated incidence. AY.X denotes the sublineages of Delta (B.1.617.2).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Phylogenetic tree of Beta (yellow) and Gamma (orange) variants (upper panel) and their distribution in the islands of the archipelago (lower panel). Square areas are proportional to the presence of the variant in each island.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Aksamentov I., Roemer C., Hodcroft E. B., Neher R. A.. (2021). Nextclade: clade assignment, mutation calling and quality control for viral genomes. J. Open Source Softw. 6 (67), 3773. doi: 10.21105/joss.03773 - DOI
    1. Alcoba-Florez J., Gil-Campesino H., Artola D. G.-M., de González-Montelongo R., Valenzuela-Fernández A., Ciuffreda L., et al. (2020). Sensitivity of different RT-qPCR solutions for SARS-CoV-2 detection. Int. J. Infect. Dis. 99, 190–192. doi: 10.1016/j.ijid.2020.07.058 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Alcoba-Florez J., Lorenzo-Salazar J. M., Gil-Campesino H., Íñigo-Campos A., Martínez de Artola D. G., García-Olivares V., et al. (2021). Monitoring the rise of the SARS-CoV-2 lineage B.1.1.7 in tenerife (Spain) since mid-December 2020. J. Infect. 82 (6), e1–e3. doi: 10.1016/j.jinf.2021.04.005 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Angeletti S., Giovanetti M., Fogolari M., Cella E., De Florio L., Lintas C., et al. (2021). SARS-CoV-2 AY.4.2 variant circulating in Italy: Genomic preliminary insight. J. Med. Virol. doi: 10.1002/jmv.27451 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Campbell E. M., Boyles A., Shankar A., Kim J., Knyazev S., Cintron R., et al. (2021. a). MicrobeTrace: Retooling molecular epidemiology for rapid public health response. PLoS Comput. Biol. 17 (9), e1009300. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009300 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

Supplementary concepts