• Katherine Laiton-Donato, Christian Julián Villabona-Arenas, José A Usme-Ciro, Carlos Franco-Muñoz, Diego A Álvarez-Díaz, Liz Stephany Villabona-Arenas, Susy Echeverría-Londoño, Zulma M Cucunubá, Nicolás D Franco-Sierra, Astrid C Flórez, Carolina Ferro, Nadim J Ajami, Diana Marcela Walteros, Franklin Prieto, Carlos Andrés Durán, Martha Lucia Ospina-Martínez, and Marcela Mercado-Reyes.
• Emerging Infect. Dis. 2020 Dec 1; 26 (12): 2854-2862.

AbstractCoronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Colombia was first diagnosed in a traveler arriving from Italy on February 26, 2020. However, limited data are available on the origins and number of introductions of COVID-19 into the country. We sequenced the causative agent of COVID-19, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), from 43 clinical samples we collected, along with another 79 genome sequences available from Colombia. We investigated the emergence and importation routes for SARS-CoV-2 into Colombia by using epidemiologic, historical air travel, and phylogenetic observations. Our study provides evidence of multiple introductions, mostly from Europe, and documents >12 lineages. Phylogenetic findings validate the lineage diversity, support multiple importation events, and demonstrate the evolutionary relationship of epidemiologically linked transmission chains. Our results reconstruct the early evolutionary history of SARS-CoV-2 in Colombia and highlight the advantages of genome sequencing to complement COVID-19 outbreak investigations.

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