https://www.socictopen.socict.org/files/original/bdd53d4cac598971fe7e1562ce69b408.pdf 03ebd7958212018d72bdcbe8a4196c7b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Coronavirus Description An account of the resource Dominio científico: Coronavirus Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Genomic and epidemiological characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 in Africa. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Christian Drosten, Augustina Angelina Sylverken, Jones Lamptey, Favour Oluwapelumi Oyelami, Michael Owusu, Bernard Nkrumah, Paul Oluwagbenga Idowu, Enoch Appiah Adu-Gyamfi, Armin Czika, Philip El-Duah, Richmond Yeboah, Oluwatayo Israel Olasunkanmi, Ellis Owusu-Dabo, Yaw Adu-Sarkodie Description An account of the resource Since late 2019, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, caused by SARS-CoV-2, has rapidly evolved to become a global pandemic. Each country was affected but with a varying number of infected cases and mortality rates. Africa was hit late by the pandemic but the number of cases rose sharply. In this study, we investigated 224 SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences from the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data (GISAID) in the early part of the outbreak, of which 69 were from Africa. We analyzed a total of 550 mutations by comparing them with the reference SARS-CoV-2 sequence from Wuhan. We classified the mutations observed based on country and region, and afterwards analyzed common and unique mutations on the African continent as a whole. Correlation analyses showed that the duo variants ORF1ab/RdRp 4715L and S protein 614G variants, which are strongly linked to fatality rate, were not significantly and positively correlated with fatality rates (r = -0.03757, P = 0.5331 and r = -0.2876, P = 0.6389, respectively), although increased number of cases correlated with number of deaths (r = 0.997, P = 0.0002). Furthermore, most cases in Africa were mainly imported from American and European countries, except one isolate with no mutation and was similar to the original isolate from Wuhan. Moreover, unique mutations specific to countries were identified in the early phase of the outbreak but these mutations were not regional-specific. There were common mutations in all isolates across the continent as well as similar isolate-specific mutations in different regions. Our findings suggest that mutation is rapid in SARS-CoV-2 in Africa and although these mutations spread across the continent, the duo variants could not possibly be the sole cause of COVID-19 deaths in Africa in the early phase of the outbreak. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 10.1371/journal.pntd.0009335 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Public Library of Science (PLoS)