Highlights

In brief

A Thai-Singapore team of researchers at A*STAR’s Bioinformatics Institute (BII) studied and pieced together the early transmission patterns of the outbreak in Thailand.

The day COVID-19 landed in Thailand

19 Aug 2020

Two early cases of COVID-19 in Thailand represent the first confirmed exported cases from China, a Thai-Singapore team reports.

In late December 2019, an outbreak of unidentified pneumonia was reported in the bustling Huanan Seafood Market in China’s Wuhan city. Responding quickly to the escalating situation, several countries established thermal screening for travelers from Wuhan and stepped up surveillance at hospitals.

What happened next played out like a classic movie plot about a pandemic: two individuals—the first confirmed exported cases of COVID-19 from China—boarded separate flights from Wuhan to Thailand’s Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport, where they were discovered on January 8 and January 13.

Racing against time, Thailand’s Ministry of Public Health confirmed both cases to be COVID-19 positive. By studying case histories, clinical characteristics and genomic profiles together with Sebastian Maurer-Stroh, Deputy Executive Director (Research) at A*STAR’s Bioinformatics Institute (BII), a Thai-Singapore team was able to piece together the early transmission patterns of the outbreak.

Although the two imported COVID-19 cases were not directly linked, their viral genomes were identical with each other and with four other viral sequences collected from patients in Wuhan. Since both individuals had not visited the Huanan Seafood Market, nor did they contact persons with COVID-19, it indicates potentially wider distribution beyond Wuhan before January 23, when travel restrictions were enforced in the city.

“Taking together the history and onset of symptoms of these two COVID-19 cases, it suggests that transmission within Wuhan beyond the Huanan Seafood Market likely occurred in the first week of January or earlier,” Maurer-Stroh explained.

Comparing the two genome sequences with known coronavirus families, the SARS-CoV-2 genome showed 80 and 88 percent identity with SARS-CoV and SARS-like bat CoV genomes from China, respectively. On a structural level, the ACE2 surface protein of SARS-CoV-2, which is responsible for viral attachment to human cells, had only 76 percent identity with SARS-CoV.

“Given several mutations in the binding interface, SARS-CoV-2 may differ in host-cell binding efficiency as compared with SARS-CoV. This could result in differences in virulence and transmission potential,” said Maurer-Stroh.

While asymptomatic cases in their incubation period would have been missed, Thailand’s rapid response early in the outbreak proved successful in these two cases, the authors noted. Another important lesson is that the genome sequences were shared in real-time via the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) online portal, which gave researchers everywhere immediate access to study the new virus and early outbreak patterns.

The A*STAR-affiliated researcher contributing to this research is from the Bioinformatics Institute (BII).

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References

Okada, P., Buathong, R., Phuygun, S., Thanadachakul, T., Parnmen, S. et al. Early transmission patterns of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in travellers from Wuhan to Thailand, January 2020. Eurosurveillance 25(8), 2000097 (2020) | article

About the Researcher

Sebastian Maurer-Stroh obtained his PhD degree from the University of Vienna, Austria, before carrying out research at the VIB Switch laboratory in Brussels, Belgium, under a Marie Curie fellowship. He joined A*STAR’s Bioinformatics Institute (BII) in 2007 and now leads a group of experts in protein sequence analysis as a Senior Principal Investigator. He was appointed as BII Deputy Executive Director (Research) in 2019, becoming the institute’s Executive Director in 2021. Maurer-Stroh also spearheads industry collaborations with local SMEs and large multinationals on sequence analysis and prediction of allergenicity potential of proteins.

This article was made for A*STAR Research by Wildtype Media Group