Study confirms Queens COVID-19 cases were origin of first wave spread
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A new study from NYU Langone tracking transmission during the first wave of COVID-19. AP Photo by Mary Altaffer
By Rachel Vick
A new study mapping the transmission of COVID-19 during the first wave seeks to shed light on the spread of the virus throughout the five boroughs, and Queens’ role during the early days of the pandemic.
Lead author Adriana Heguy, together with a team of researchers from NYU Langone and experts in a specific gene sequencing method from South Africa and Belgium, were able to confirm that Queens was in fact the epicenter of the epicenter.
“We realized it was interesting to see how the virus was moving through the New York City boroughs,” said Heguy, director of the Genome Technology Center, Office for Science and Research at NYU Langone Health. “If we can pinpoint hot areas or transmission hubs, then this is where we can take public health efforts to [limit the spread].”
The ten graphs created by tracking slightly mutated strains of COVID found Queens and Brooklyn as transmission hubs, areas of higher than average circulation of the virus that were the source of spread to outlying areas like Manhattan and Nassau County.
For Heguy, a Hispanic who lived in Queens for over a decade, the impact of the pandemic and relevance of the study hit close to home.
“The study is important in terms of people of color in Queens and Brooklyn who were disproportionately affected, so I’m glad I can have some role,” she said. “It’s important to do disease surveillance and prevention everywhere, and important not to neglect the outer boroughs.”
Heguy said that the team believes that one reason essential workers from the outer boroughs might have been hit hardest is because of the possibility that “a lot of community transmission happened on public transportation before the mask mandate and the shortage of masks during the early days.”
“We didn't study it directly but to me, it speaks to the fact that essential workers live in Queens and Brooklyn and didn't have the luxury to stay home and work remotely like people in Manhattan, in the financial industry, where they didn't have to be at work,” she added.
The data collected showed repeated spread of COVID-19 from Queens to other boroughs. Graph via Heguy et al
Though the results were not surprising, Heguy said that it was reassuring to have the research reaffirm the observed patterns and that working with an elite team who didn’t even know where any of the outer boroughs were before beginning the study saw the same conclusion.
The team used the phylogeographic method to track and chart 828 viral genomic sequences — natural mutations of COVID-19 as it spreads — that were collected collected between March and May of 2020. Graphs that branch out in the direction of transmission were created using patient zip codes and changes in the virus that acted like flags .
“For us people working genomics, it's a pretty obvious thing to do to sequence a virus especially when there’s a new pathogen because as viruses mutate and are transmitted more and more these mutations can be used as flags to trace the origin and to see how the virus is spreading,” Heguy said.
The method is most effective in a sample size from a dense region like New York City, researchers wrote.
An earlier study from the team was able to identify that the first cases in the city were brought from Europe, according to Heguy. They have already begun the work to track variants, with nearly 1,500 different sequences, and the impact of vaccinations on transmission.
Heguy said that the presence of that many different sequences in one sample is “a lot, considering we got that from just within the health system — [there are more] within the city.”
