Rural populations facilitated early SARS-CoV-2 evolution and transmission in Missouri, USA

In the United States, rural populations comprise 60 million individuals and suffered from high COVID-19 disease burdens. Despite this, surveillance efforts are biased toward urban centers. Consequently, how rurally circulating SARS-CoV-2 viruses contribute toward emerging variants remains poorly understood. In this study, we aim to investigate the role of rural communities in the evolution and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 during the early pandemic. We collected 544 urban and 435 rural COVID-19-positive respiratory specimens from an overall vaccine-naïve population in Southwest Missouri between July and December 2020. Genomic analyses revealed 53 SARS-CoV-2 Pango lineages in our study samples, with 14 of these lineages identified only in rural samples. Phylodynamic analyses showed that frequent bi-directional diffusions occurred between rural and urban communities in Southwest Missouri, and that four out of seven Missouri rural-origin lineages spread globally. Further analyses revealed that the nucleocapsid protein (N):R203K/G204R paired substitutions, which were detected disproportionately across multiple Pango lineages, were more associated with urban than rural sequences. Positive selection was detected at N:204 among rural samples but was not evident in urban samples, suggesting that viruses may encounter distinct selection pressures in rural versus urban communities. This study demonstrates that rural communities may be a crucial source of SARS-CoV-2 evolution and transmission, highlighting the need to expand surveillance and resources to rural populations for COVID-19 mitigation.