JC School of Public Health and Primary Care, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
JC School of Public Health and Primary Care, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China; CUHK Shenzhen Research Institute, Shenzhen, China.
J Infect Public Health. 2022 Mar;15(3):338-342. doi: 10.1016/j.jiph.2022.01.020. Epub 2022 Feb 4.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has become a major public health threat. This study aims to evaluate the effect of virus mutation activities and policy interventions on COVID-19 transmissibility in Hong Kong.
In this study, we integrated the genetic activities of multiple proteins, and quantified the effect of government interventions and mutation activities against the time-varying effective reproduction number R.
We found a significantly positive relationship between R and mutation activities and a significantly negative relationship between R and government interventions. The results showed that the mutations that contributed most to the increase of R were from the spike, nucleocapsid and ORF1b genes. Policy of prohibition on group gathering was estimated to have the largest impact on mitigating virus transmissibility. The model explained 63.2% of the R variability with the R.
Our study provided a convenient framework to estimate the effect of genetic contribution and government interventions on pathogen transmissibility. We showed that the S, N and ORF1b protein had significant contribution to the increase of transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 in Hong Kong, while restrictions of public gathering and suspension of face-to-face class are the most effective government interventions strategies.
2019 年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行已成为主要的公共卫生威胁。本研究旨在评估病毒突变活动和政策干预对香港 COVID-19 传染性的影响。
本研究整合了多种蛋白的遗传活性，并量化了政府干预和突变活动对时变有效繁殖数 R 的影响。
我们发现 R 与突变活动呈显著正相关，R 与政府干预呈显著负相关。结果表明，对 R 增加贡献最大的突变来自刺突蛋白、核衣壳蛋白和 ORF1b 基因。禁止群体聚集的政策被估计对减轻病毒传播的影响最大。该模型用 R 解释了 63.2%的 R 变异性。
本研究提供了一个方便的框架来估计遗传贡献和政府干预对病原体传染性的影响。我们表明，S、N 和 ORF1b 蛋白对 SARS-CoV-2 在香港的传染性增加有显著贡献，而公众集会的限制和面对面课程的暂停是最有效的政府干预策略。
