aMicrobial Biotechnology Research Centre, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
bDepartment of Microbiology, School of Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
cBehbahan Faculty of Medical Sciences, Behbahan, Iran
dDepartment of Microbiology, School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
eDepartment of Pathobiology, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
fFood and Drug Laboratory Research Center, Food and Drug Administration, MOH&ME, Tehran, Iran
⁎Corresponding authors: Malihe Talebi, Department of Microbiology, School of Medicine and Microbial Biotechnology Research Centre, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Shahid Hemmat Highway, Tehran, Iran.
⁎⁎Maryam Kakanj, Food and Drug Laboratory Research Center, Food and Drug Administation, MOH&ME, Tehran, Iran.
© 2021 The Authors
Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.