{"id":222,"date":"2021-10-29T15:48:25","date_gmt":"2021-10-29T15:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/website.prod.unilu.spikeseed.cloud\/lcsb-fr\/news\/by-covid-a-new-eu-project-for-pandemic-preparedness\/"},"modified":"2021-10-29T15:48:25","modified_gmt":"2021-10-29T15:48:25","slug":"by-covid-a-new-eu-project-for-pandemic-preparedness","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.uni.lu\/lcsb-fr\/news\/by-covid-a-new-eu-project-for-pandemic-preparedness\/","title":{"rendered":"BY-COVID: A new EU project for pandemic preparedness"},"content":{"rendered":"

BeYond-COVID (BY-COVID),\u00a0a new \u20ac12 million Horizon Europe funded project, was recently launched. It\u00a0will tackle the data challenges that can hinder effective\u00a0pandemic response. The core aim of the project is to ensure that data on SARS-CoV-2 and\u00a0other infectious diseases can be found and used by everyone.\u00a0ELIXIR Luxembourg and the Bioinformatics Core of the LCSB will participate in one of the work packages of this ambitious European project.<\/p>\n

\nLearning from the COVID-19 crisis<\/h2>\n

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect many lives globally, and it is crucial for us to\u00a0reflect back on how the scientific community initially responded to the crisis, and what\u00a0technical gaps there were that hindered the ability of scientists to investigate SARS-CoV-2\u00a0at the early stages of the pandemic. There has been a strong response across the world,\u00a0with many nations generating and sharing vast amounts of data and locally tracking\u00a0variants. Learning from this past experience, and also by monitoring the present day\u00a0developments of the COVID-19 pandemic we can develop resources, data standards and\u00a0guidelines that will enable rapid application to novel emerging threats, and specifically\u00a0unite and coordinate dispersed datasets from different institutes and countries.<\/p>

Niklas Blomberg, BY-COVID Coordinator and Director of\u00a0ELIXIR<\/a>, spoke of the need to work\u00a0across scientific communities in pandemic preparedness: \u201cIt is fundamental that we learn\u00a0and build on the experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, to ensure that, from a data\u00a0perspective, there are no hindrances to rapid access to infectious disease data. The\u00a0BY-COVID project is a fantastic opportunity to build on the existing infrastructure of the COVID-19 Data Platform, providing opportunities for new knowledge to be generated by integrating data from new disciplines to create a strong foundation for future effective pandemic response\u201d<\/p>\n

\nIncorporating and sharing data efficiently<\/h2>\n

BY-COVID will build and expand upon the successful\u00a0COVID-19 Data Platform<\/a>, a resource initiated in the early stages of the pandemic and led by EMBL-EBI. Since its launch, many countries have established their own\u00a0national data hubs<\/a>, which ensures that data produced locally can be instantaneously connected and shared with the main COVID-19 Data Portal. Rather than focus purely on providing technical solutions to the biological data, BY-COVID will work with partners such as the Versatile emerging infectious disease Observatory (VEO<\/a>) and the Public Health Information Research Infrastructure (PHIRI<\/a>) to incorporate data from a broader range of disciplines, including public health and social sciences. The BY-COVID project strives to simplify data access and reuse through three main steps:<\/p>