NEW YORK – SARS-CoV-2 was introduced into the UK more than a thousand times at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new analysis.
By analyzing more than 50,000 SARS-CoV-2 genomes, about half of which were collected in the UK, in conjunction with travel and epidemiological data, a University of Oxford-led team of researchers examined the origins and spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the UK. The initial wave of the pandemic peaked there in April 2020, and by late June nearly 40,500 COVID-19-related deaths were reported in the UK.