JMIRxMed JMIRx Med JMIRx Med 2563-6316 JMIR Publications Toronto, Canada v2i3e32296 10.2196/32296 Peer-Review Report Peer-Review Report Peer Review of “Emergence of the First Strains of SARS-CoV-2 Lineage B.1.1.7 in Romania: Genomic Analysis” Meinert Edward Apetrei Cristian MD, PhD 1 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0322-7185 Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA United States Jul-Sep 2021 13 8 2021 2 3 e32296 21 7 2021 21 7 2021 ©Cristian Apetrei. Originally published in JMIRx Med (https://med.jmirx.org), 13.08.2021. 2021

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIRx Med, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://med.jmirx.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.

 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.29.21250643v1 https://preprints.jmir.org/preprint/28049 https://med.jmirx.org/2021/3/e23393/ https://med.jmirx.org/2021/3/e28049/ infectious disease COVID-19 strain virus Romania transmission spread mutation impact case study genome sequencing genetics epidemiology variant virology lineage

This is a peer-review report submitted for the paper “Emergence of the First Strains of SARS-CoV-2 Lineage B.1.1.7 in Romania: Genomic Analysis.”

Round 1 Review General Comments

This paper [1] reports the identification and characterization of the SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 variant (the English variant) in North-East Romania and a synopsis of the circulation of this variant in Romania. The manuscript is timely, straightforward, and professionally crafted, and the results are of interest for the characterization of SARS-CoV-2 strains. Such routine surveys are necessary to trace the emergence of new variants of interest and are scarce in Eastern Europe.

 Minor Comments

The manuscript needs some revision of English. It is generally well prepared, but there are several instances in which it could benefit from a professional revision.

None declared.

 Lobiuc A Dimian M Sturdza O Filip R Covasa M Emergence of the First Strains of SARS-CoV-2 Lineage B.1.1.7 in Romania: Genomic Analysis JMIRx Med 2021 8 2 3 e28049 10.2196/28049