Emergence of European and North American mutant variants of SARS-CoV-2 in Southeast Asia

The SARS-CoV-2 strain of the coronavirus is responsible for the current COVID-19 pandemic, with an ongoing toll of over 5 million infections and 333 thousand deaths worldwide within the first 5 months. Insight into the phylodynamics and mutation variants of this strain is vital to understanding the nature of its spread in different climate conditions. The incidence rate of COVID-19 is increasing at an alarming pace within subtropical Southeast Asian nations with high temperatures and humidity. To understand this spread, we analyzed 60 genome sequences of SARS-CoV-2 available in GISAID platform from 6 Southeast Asian countries. Multiple sequence alignments and maximum likelihood phylogenetic analyses were performed to analyze and characterize the non-synonymous mutant variants circulating in this region. Global mutation…