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Article History

Received: 29 May 2020

Accepted: 11 November 2020

First Online: 27 November 2020

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: To conduct the research, we used bacterial strains, which are not considered human samples. Accordingly, this research was not considered human research and is out of the scope of the decree n° 2016-1537 of November 16, 2016, implementing law n° 2012-300 of March 5, 2012, on research involving human subjects. Therefore, no ethics approval was needed and no informed consent was required.All French bacteriological samples were collected in the frame of the French national diphtheria surveillance and are collected, coded, shipped, managed, and analyzed according to the French National Reference Center protocols that received approval from the French competent body CNIL (Commission Nationale Informatique et Libertés; approval number: 1474671). Other strains were obtained from culture collections.The research conformed to the principles of the Helsinki Declaration.

: Not applicable

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.