-Devyani Goswami, Amity University Kolkata
One of the parts of the society which remains under huge threat for the spreading of the deadly SARS-CoV-2 is the care homes. Older people with health issues remain to be the vulnerable target of this virus. The shared living accommodations along with residents, staff and visitors in an enclosed space leads to a higher risk of contamination.
SARS-CoV-2 can mutate at the rate of 2.5 nucleotides per month, for which researchers all over the world have created a phylogenetic tree to show the relationship between each variation. Samples collected and analyzed from 6,600 patients between 26 February and 10 May 2020 and tested at the Public Health England (PHE) Laboratory in Cambridge showed that out of all the cases, 1,167 (18%) cared home residents from 337 care homes and 193 of which were residential homes and 144 nursing homes; where the majority of them belonged from East England.
When compared with non-care home residents admitted to hospital with SARS-CoV-2, hospitalized care home residents were less likely to be admitted to ICUs (less than 7% versus 21%) and more likely to die (47% versus 20%). The researchers examined the viral sequences and found that for several of the care homes with the highest number of cases when all of the cases were clustered closely together on a phylogenetic tree showed with either identical genomes or just one base pair difference. Also, cases were distributed across the phylogenetic tree showing more widespread genetic differences, suggesting that each of these cases was independent and unrelated to a shared transmission source.
No new viral lineages were found from outside the UK, concluding due to the travel restriction and lockdown periods which showed a slow decrease in the number of affected patients in April 2020.
Source: 1) Hamilton, W.L., et al. (2021) Genomic epidemiology of COVID-19 in care homes in the East of England. eLife. doi.org/10.7554/eLife.64618.
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