Isolation, sequence, infectivity and replication kinetics of SARS-CoV-2

Banerjee, Arinjay; Nasir, Jalees A.; Budylowski, Patrick; Yip, Lily; Aftanas, Patryk; Christie, Natasha; Ghalami, Ayoob; Baid, Kaushal; Raphenya, Amogelang R.; Hirota, Jeremy A.; Miller, Matthew S.; McGeer, Allison J.; Ostrowski, Mario; Kozak, Robert A.; McArthur, Andrew G.; Mossman, Karen; Mubareka, Samira

SARS-CoV-2 emerged in December 2019 in Wuhan, China and has since infected over 1.5 million people, of which over 107,000 have died. As SARS-CoV-2 spreads across the planet, speculations remain about the range of human cells that can be infected by SARS-CoV-2. In this study, we report the isolation of SARS-CoV-2 from two cases of COVID-19 in Toronto, Canada. We determined the genomic sequences of the two isolates and identified single nucleotide changes in representative populations of our virus stocks. More importantly, we tested a wide range of human immune cells for productive infection with SARS-CoV-2. Here we confirm that human primary peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) are not permissive for SARS-CoV-2. As SARS-CoV-2 continues to spread globally, it is essential to monitor single nucleotide polymorphisms in the virus and to continue to isolate circulating viruses to determine viral genotype and phenotype using in vitro and in vivo infection models.