As Member States continue to draft and negotiate an annex to the WHO Pandemic Agreement on the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing, GISAID remarked that 20 years ago, Member States came together to define the GISAID sharing mechanism, with the fundamental commitment to data contributors to protect their interests in the data they share.
read moreRecent audits into the use of data feeds revealed irregularities and identified individuals who have violated their agreed terms. Some of them were found to have considerably encroached on the rights of GISAID’s data contributors, which resulted in the termination of their data feed. Unfortunately, some individuals have created confusion by spreading disinformation in various forums. read more
In recent months, GISAID has become aware that a small group of its users have violated the terms of their access Agreement and misused the data shared via GISAID. Among them are individuals that received GISAID support to operate their own “dashboard” to display aggregate data, but have abused the GISAID data sharing process in violation of the rights inherent to the owners of that data.
read moreSince our last update, pathogen data sharing has continued to be a prominent topic of discussion as experts and non-experts voice their opinions, including about GISAID itself. Because of the ongoing spotlight and risk of confusion, we’ve shared some useful information
Here we address Dispute resolution between data users and data contributors, Contributions and funding, Governance, and Privacy of individuals,
read moreRecent discussions surrounding early hCoV-19 sequence data associated with a manuscript submitted by the researchers at the China CDC have been clouded by speculation regarding the status of the data. Here we clarify the current status of that data, and take this opportunity to reiterate the general data sharing policies at GISAID.
read moreGISAID is committed to near-instant processing and release of genome and metadata to ensure its platform continues to make emerging outbreak information accessible at unprecedented speeds and scale. From time to time, laboratories will increase the speed with which they generate data and submit to GISAID, for instance when new Variants of Interest or Variants of Concern are designated by the WHO. With this increased speed, the need to check for errors in genomic sequence data or metadata also increases.
read moreIn late July 2021, GISAID confirmed with public health authorities its procedures for the quality control of gaps in genomic sequences that cause frameshifts and other genomic changes. Social media discussions mistakenly suggested B.1.621 (Mu) genome sequences could have been kept from release due to a 4nt deletion in ORF3A that results in a premature stop codon.
read moreDue to the naturally expanding phylogenetic diversity of hCoV-19 viruses in late February 2020, GISAID named for consistent reporting larger clades, based on marker mutations within 6 high-level phylogenetic groupings from the early split of S and L, to the further evolution of L into V and G and later of G into GH, GRY (Alpha) and GK (Delta).
read moreVirus surveillance in animals is an important aspect of pandemic preparedness to know what is out there and could cause zoonotic infections (jumps from animals to humans) or even represent pandemic threats. Colleagues have concluded a surveillance study in pigs and identified a new reassortant H1N1 swine flu that shows the minimal characteristics for a virus with pandemic potential.
Here are some important facts to consider:
read moreAs the outbreak evolves over time and more data becomes available, several colleagues have analyzed and proposed different "types" of the virus and their origin. Depending on choice of definitions one can classify the circulating virus strains into a different number of clades based on genetic variants. These are part of the natural evolution of the virus currently not known to be associated with any differences in virulence.
read more
