Amplicons of whole genome sequences of SARS-CoV-2 were generated with a 50 ng viral RNA template, by using CleanPlex SARS-CoV-2 Research and Surveillance Panel, QIAseq DIRECT SARSCoV-2 Kit and Illumina COVIDSeq Assay following manufacters’ protocol. Libraries were then generated using the Nextera DNA Flex library preparation kit with Illumina index adaptors and sequenced on a MiSeq instrument (Illumina, San Diego, CA, USA) with 2 × 150-bp paired-end reads. Raw reads were trimmed for adapters and filtered for quality (Phred score > 28) using Fastp (v0.23.2)52 (link). Reference-based assembly was performed with BWA-mem (v0.7.17)53 (link) aligning against the GenBank reference genome NC_045512.2 (Wuhan, collection date: December 2019).
SNP variants were called with freebayes (v1.3.2)54 and all SNPs having a minimum supporting read frequency of 2% with a depth ≥ 10 were retained.
Synonymous and non-synonymous SNPs characterizing Omicron lineages were defined as high-abundant mutations if characterized by a read frequency ≥ 40%, and low-abundant mutations if characterized by a read frequency between 2 and 40%.