Description of Collaborative Activity: |
To help accelerate the use of near-realtime pathogen genomic data throughout the pandemic response, CDC’s Advanced Molecular Detection (AMD) program (https://www.cdc.gov/amd) is establishing an open genomics consortium to spearhead and organize public health sequencing and response efforts across the United States. This consortium, SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing for Public Health Emergency Response, Epidemiology and Surveillance (SPHERES), is intended to help coordinate and support sequencing at state and local public health laboratories across the country, and to better engage clinical, academic and commercial laboratories that are sequencing – or planning to sequence -- SARS-CoV-2 at any scale. With this coalition, we hope to improve communication and knowledge-sharing between US laboratories, to develop consensus guidance on data and metadata standards, to reduce barriers to bioinformatic analysis and data sharing, and to better align sequencing requirements and resource needs with different sources of funding, technology, expertise and other means of support. |
