We gratefully acknowledge all data contributors, i.e., the Authors and their Originating laboratories responsible for obtaining the specimens, and their Submitting laboratories for generating the genetic sequence and metadata and sharing via the GISAID Initiative [1,2,3], on which this research is based. For more information on GISAID, please visit: https://gisaid.org/.

1. Khare, S., et al (2021) GISAID’s Role in Pandemic Response. China CDC Weekly, 3(49): 1049-1051. doi: 10.46234/ccdcw2021.255 PMCID: 8668406.

2. Elbe, S. and Buckland-Merrett, G. (2017) Data, disease and diplomacy: GISAID’s innovative contribution to global health. Global Challenges, 1:33-46. doi: 10.1002/gch2.1018 PMCID: 31565258.

3. Shu, Y. and McCauley, J. (2017) GISAID: from vision to reality. EuroSurveillance, 22(13) doi: 10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2017.22.13.30494 PMCID: PMC5388101.

           Xiaobo Zhou, PhD

           Email: Xiaobo.Zhou@uth.tmc.edu

           Address: Center for Computational Systems Medicine, School of Biomedical Informatics, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, 7000 Fannin Street, Houston, TX 77030

            Pora Kim, PhD

           Email: Pora.Kim@uth.tmc.edu

           Address: Center for Computational Systems Medicine, School of Biomedical Informatics, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, 7000 Fannin Street, Houston, TX 77030

            Yuzhou Feng, PhD student

            Email: fengyuzhou@stu.scu.edu.cn

            Address: West China Biomedical Big Data Center, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041