Emergence of a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 virus variant with novel genomic architecture in Hong Kong

Abstract

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, divergent SARS-CoV-2 lineages have emerged continuously, mostly through the genomic accumulation of substitutions. We report the discovery of a SARS-CoV-2 variant with a novel genomic architecture characterized by absent ORF7a, ORF7b and ORF8, and a C-terminally modified ORF6 product resulting from partial 5’-UTR duplication and transposition.