Isolation and characterization of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 in Turkey

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) associated with severe respiratory illness emerged in Wuhan, China, in late 2019. The virus has able to spread promptly to across all continents in the world. The current pandemic has posed a great threat to public health concern and safety. Currently, there are no specific treatments or licensed vaccines available for COVID-19. We isolated the SARS-CoV-2 from the nasopharyngeal sample of a patient with confirmed COVID-19 in Turkey. We determined that Vero E6 and MA-104 cell lines are suitable for SARS-CoV-2 that supports viral replication, development of CPE and subsequent cell death. Phylogenetic analyses of whole genome sequences showed that hCoV-19/Turkey/ERAGEM-001/2020 strain clustered with the strains mainly from Australia, Canada, England, Iran and Kuwait and the cases in the nearby clusters were reported to have travel history to Iran and share the common unique nucleotide substitutions