BC’s provincial state of emergency, in place since March of 2020 due to COVID-19, was lifted on July 1st. While the pandemic endures around the world, BC’s vaccine rates are high and continue to climb and case counts are steadily dropping.
Throughout the pandemic, BC-CfE researchers have been at the forefront of the research efforts to combat COVID-19, contributing their expertise to help better understand the evolutionary genetics of the virus, its spread, and how to best safeguard our population.
Dr. Jeffrey Joy, is the senior research scientist in the BC-CfE molecular epidemiology and evolutionary genetics group. His research interests focus on evolutionary epidemiology, virus evolution, phylogenetics, population genetics, and molecular evolution. Working with his lab, which includes research assistants Angela McLaughlin, Brad Jones, and Rachel Miller, biotechnician Vincent Montoya, and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Gideon Mordecai, Dr. Joy continues to lead efforts to combat COVID-19.
One of Dr. Joy’s more recent studies found that federal restrictions on non-essential international travel decreased the proportion of COVID-19 cases from international transmission. However, Dr. Joy’s team found that this drop coincided with exponential growth of within-province transmission. These findings helped dispel the perception that many of Canada’s cases came from international sources. The CBC reported on the study and presented the information in a compelling and interactive graphic format, which can be accessed here. Dr. Joy’s research could inform future policy decisions for reducing virus spread as the study found, “strong evidence that international introductions and interprovincial transmission of SARS-CoV-2 contributed to the Canadian COVID-19 burden throughout 2020, despite initial reductions mediated by travel restrictions in 2020.”
Other recent COVID-19 research by the BC-CfE found that more than half of the imported variants of the coronavirus that led to outbreaks in Canada likely came from the United States. Russia, India, Italy and the U.K. were found to be the next biggest sources of imported virus. This research is critical in disputing the notion of China as the key spreader of COVID-19, an idea which has led to a radical increase in anti-Asian racism and violence. Dr. Joy’s research found that COVID-19 arriving directly from China accounted for relatively little transmission of COVID-19 here in BC.
This study was made possible by a remarkable international database of DNA sequences of SARS-CoV-2 which the BC-CfE was able to access. This invaluable resource enables scientists to track, at the genetic level, where and how the pandemic is spreading.
Other recent studies from Dr. Joy’s lab have focused on the genesis of the pandemic in North America and Europe, available here; where, when, and how different parts of the SARS-CoV-2 genome have been favoured by natural selection, summarized in depth here; the circumstances surrounding the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern; and consequences of interaction between the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and the HIV pandemic.
These recent studies are some of the many that the BC-CfE has successfully undertaken during the pandemic, demonstrating the value and adaptability of BC-CfE’s HIV/AIDS research, redeployed as demand for resources and priorities shifted to the fight against COVID-19.