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Low dose inocula of SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant transmits more efficiently than earlier variants in hamsters

2021; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 4; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/s42003-021-02640-x

2399-3642

Bobo Wing-Yee Mok, Honglian Liu, Shaofeng Deng, Jiayan Liu, Jinxia Zhang, Siu-Ying Lau, Siwen Liu, Rachel Chun-Yee Tam, Conor J. Cremin, Timothy Ting-Leung Ng, Jake Siu-Lun Leung, Lam-Kwong Lee, Pui Wang, Kelvin Kai‐Wang To, Jasper Fuk‐Woo Chan, Kwok‐Hung Chan, Kwok‐Yung Yuen, G. G. Siu, Honglin Chen,

COVID-19 epidemiological studies

Abstract Emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2 have been shown to rapidly replace original circulating strains in humans soon after they emerged. There is a lack of experimental evidence to explain how these natural occurring variants spread more efficiently than existing strains of SARS-CoV-2 in transmission. We found that the Alpha variant (B.1.1.7) increased competitive fitness over earlier parental D614G lineages in in-vitro and in-vivo systems. Using hamster transmission model, we further demonstrated that the Alpha variant is able to replicate and shed more efficiently in the nasal cavity of hamsters than other variants with low dose and short duration of exposure. The capability to initiate effective infection with low inocula may be one of the key factors leading to the rapid transmission of emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2.