Researchers from the University of Helsinki and KU Leuven in Belgium investigated the arrival and spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Finland in 2020. According to the analysis, a total of 42 independent virus lineages arrived in Finland in spring 2020, of which only a handful caused large chains of transmission.

The COVID-19 pandemic began at the end of 2019 in Wuhan, China. Since then, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has spread rapidly despite attempts to restrict it. By mid-April 2022, the number of reported coronavirus infection cases exceeded 500 million globally, with the total number of deaths at over 6.2 million.

In a recently completed study, researchers from the University of Helsinki and KU Leuven in Belgium investigated the arrival and spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Finland in 2020. The results have been published in the Communications Medicine journal.

“Research on the geographical evolutionary history of coronaviruses revealed that in the spring of 2020, an estimated 42 independent virus lineages arrived in Finland primarily from Italy, Austria and Spain. Four of these lineages caused two-thirds of the entire epidemic in Finland in spring 2020, while a single virus lineage from Spain led to a major transmission chain that covered one-third of the epidemic in the country. However, most of the 42 lineages did not lead to community transmission in Finland,” says Postdoctoral Researcher Ravi Kant.

“In the early stages of the pandemic, one of the biggest problems in monitoring the chains of transmission was the genetic similarity of the virus everywhere in the world — there were very few differences in the viral genome between individual countries and chains of transmission. Philippe Lemey’s research group developed an analysis technique that combines data on human mobility at individual and population levels with the sequence analysis of the viral genome. We applied this technique to Finnish sequencing data,” says Postdoctoral Researcher Teemu Smura.

Coronavirus landed in Finland from Austria, Italy and Spain

According to the researchers, Austria, Spain and Italy were the most significant sources of coronavirus spreading to Finland in 2020. These countries also had the earliest infection spikes in February 2020.

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