GISAID’s Role in Pandemic Response
Shruti Khare, GISAID Global Data Science Initiative (GISAID), Munich, Germany, Céline Gurry, Lucas Freitas, Mark B. Schultz, Gunter Bach, Amadou Diallo, Nancy Akite, Joses Ho, Raphael TC Lee, Winston Yeo, Gisaid Core Curation Team, Sebastian Maurer‐Stroh, Institut Pasteur de Dakar, Dakar, Senegal, China National GeneBank, Shenzhen, China, A*STAR Infectious Disease Labs (ID Labs), Singapore
Abstract
GISAID is a global data science initiative and the primary source of genomic and associated metadata of all influenza viruses, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the pandemic coronavirus causing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). GISAID's publicly accessible data sharing platform enables collaboration of over 42,000 participating researchers from 198 nations and data generators from over 3,500 institutions across the globe. Since the first wholegenome sequences were made available by China CDC through GISAID on January 10, 2020, over 5 million genetic sequences of SARS-CoV-2 from 194 countries and territories have been made publicly available through GISAID's EpiCoV database as of November 9, 2021. This high-quality, curated data enabled the rapid development of diagnostic and prophylactic measures against SARS-CoV-2 including the first diagnostic tests and the first vaccines to combat COVID-19 as well as continuous monitoring of emerging variants in near real-time.