About the Authors

Liora Regev

Contributed equally to this work with: Liora Regev, Tal Meningher

Affiliation Central Virology Laboratory, Ministry of Health, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Ramat-Gan, Israel

Tal Meningher

Contributed equally to this work with: Liora Regev, Tal Meningher

Affiliations Central Virology Laboratory, Ministry of Health, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Ramat-Gan, Israel, Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

Musa Hindiyeh

Affiliation Central Virology Laboratory, Ministry of Health, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Ramat-Gan, Israel

Ella Mendelson

Affiliations Central Virology Laboratory, Ministry of Health, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Ramat-Gan, Israel, Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, School of Public Health, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel

Michal Mandelboim

michalman@sheba.health.gov.il

Affiliation Central Virology Laboratory, Ministry of Health, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Ramat-Gan, Israel

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: MM. Performed the experiments: LR TM MH. Analyzed the data: LR TM EM MM. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: LR TM MH EM MM. Wrote the paper: MM. Performed the molecular analysis: LR. Did the phylogenetic analysis and statistcs: TM. Provided critical help and reagents: MH. Supervised the research: EM MM.