Challenge

During the COVID 19 pandemic, fragmented data systems hindered rapid understanding of emerging variants and effective public health decision-making. BY COVID addresses this by creating an integrated, pan European and cross disciplinary data framework for SARS CoV 2 and other infectious diseases. It focuses on mobilising raw viral genomic data, connecting clinical, epidemiological, and genomic information, standardising metadata, and ensuring federation of data systems compliant with data protection and interoperability standards, which are crucial for real time variant surveillance and future pandemic preparedness.

Solutions

By COVID integrates and expands the existing COVID 19 Data Platform by coordinating national and European infrastructures such as ELIXIR, BBMRI ERIC, ECRIN, PHIRI, and CESSDA.  Coordinated by EMBL EBI/ELIXIR, the Horizon Europe–funded project mobilises and harmonises viral genome sequences globally, develops a federated data analysis system via Galaxy workflows, and arranges metadata for long-term cataloguing accessible through the COVID 19 Data Portal.

Results

The BY COVID ecosystem enhances Europe’s public health infrastructure by enabling standardised viral sequence sharing, metadata management, and federated analysis, improving variant tracking and decision-making in real time. It delivers demonstrated capabilities in interoperable data federation, harmonisation of metadata and sample identifiers, and strengthens genomic surveillance capacity, fostering readiness for future pandemics. The open-access framework supports SMEs, academia, and policy makers, advancing rapid knowledge generation in infectious disease.