A snapshot of SARS-CoV-2 genome availability up to 30th March, 2020 and its implications

Carla Mavian; Simone Marini; Mattia Prosperi; Marco Salemi

Soon after the first epidemiological and SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequence data were made available, a glut of phylogeny-based analyses began to circulate discussing, in scientific papers as well as (social) media, countries that might have been fueling the spread. The implications of misunderstanding the real dynamic of the COVID-19 pandemic are extremely dangerous. Ethnic or social discrimination resulting from unsupported assumptions on viral contagion -often amplified by irresponsible, uncontrollable communications -can be highly damaging for people and countries. In particular, the US-based NextStrain (4) team has been posting real-time updates on the epidemic tracing by molecular analyses. Despite (social) media are often vehicle for fake news and boast news hype, it is also worth noting the tremendous effort of the scientific community to provide free, up-to-date information on ongoing studies, as well as critical evaluations. Several discussions and evidence-based debates on controversial hypotheses on the epidemic have ensued -such as the number of untraced infections in the US, the putative virus introduction in Italy through Germany, and the alleged lineage diversification in China (5) later criticized (6) . Recently, an editorial published on Science (7) has also highlighted how unsupported or misleading claims circulating in forums, social media, and even peer-reviewed articles, have been led by a substantial over interpretation of the available data. Hence, the urgency to reframe the current debate in more rigorous scientific terms, and quantitatively evaluate whether sufficient information for reliable phylogenetic and phylogeographic studies currently exists, or which gaps need to be addressed. We explored the characteristics of few datasets through time and assess phylogenetic signal to understand whether we this data is useful of not.