Noam Harel

TL;DR: In this paper, a matched cohort study was conducted to examine the distribution of VOCs in infections of BNT162b2 mRNA vaccinees from Clalit Health Services (Israel) using viral genomic sequencing, and hypothesized that if vaccine effectiveness against a VOC is reduced, its proportion among breakthrough cases would be higher than in unvaccinated controls.

TL;DR: This work sequences 212 SARS-CoV-2 sequences and uses them to perform a comprehensive analysis to trace the origins and spread of the virus and finds that travelers returning from the United States of America significantly contributed to viral spread in Israel.

TL;DR: The findings underscore the ability of this virus to efficiently transmit between and within countries, as well as demonstrate the effectiveness of social distancing measures for reducing its spread.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors performed a case-control study that examined whether BNT162b2 vaccinees with documented SARS-CoV-2 infection were more likely to become infected with B117 or B1351 compared with unvaccinated individuals.

TL;DR: A new statistical approach named AssociVar is proposed, which differentiates between true mutations and sequencing errors from direct RNA/DNA sequencing using MinION, and is applicable to long read sequencing data from any organism for accurate detection of bona fide mutations and inter-strain polymorphisms.