As the year 2020 came to a close, several new strains have been reported for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, the agent responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic that has afflicted us all this past year. However, it is difficult to comprehend the scale, in sequence space, geographical location and time, at which SARS-CoV-2 mutates and evolves in its human hosts.

To get an appreciation for the rapid evolution of the coronavirus, we built interactive scalable vector graphics (SVG) maps that show daily nucleotide variations in genomes from the si (...)

As the year 2020 came to a close, several new strains have been reported for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, the agent responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic that has afflicted us all this past year. However, it is difficult to comprehend the scale, in sequence space, geographical location and time, at which SARS-CoV-2 mutates and evolves in its human hosts.

To get an appreciation for the rapid evolution of the coronavirus, we built interactive scalable vector graphics (SVG) maps that show daily nucleotide variations in genomes from the six most populated continents compared to that of the initial, ground-zero SARS-CoV-2 isolate sequenced at the beginning of the year.

The attached compressed file package comprises SARS-CoV-2 mutation timemaps SVG files for 2020 and 2021, updated with data submitted to GISAID as of February 5th 2021 (inclusive). It is a snapshot of the webpage hosting these maps (https://bcgsc.github.io/SARS2) on that day and includes the script and single nucleotide variation (SNV) report files used to generate these and could be used by anyone to generate additional and custom interactive SVG maps. It supplements our F1000research article. The frequently updated and comprehensive SARS-CoV-2 genome SNV reports (https://www.bcgsc.ca/downloads/btl/SARS-CoV-2/mutations) represent a wealth of information that could be mined to gain further insights into the rapid SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus evolution in human hosts.