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Posted on Tuesday, March 9, 2021

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued seven awards as part of the SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing for Public Health Emergency Response, Epidemiology, and Surveillance (SPHERES) Initiative. The awards, totaling nearly $14.5 million over two years, are intended to fill knowledge gaps and promote innovation in the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic. SPHERES builds upon six years of investment by CDC’s Advanced Molecular Detection program. This program integrates next-generation genomic sequencing technologies with bioinformatics and epidemiology expertise across the US public health system. The SPHERES collaboration, which currently includes scientists from nearly 200 public health, academic, clinical, and non-profit laboratories and institutions, aims to accelerate the application of SARS-CoV-2 genome sequencing for genomic epidemiology and pandemic response.

Posted on Friday, January 8, 2021

The Office of AMD recently released a COVID-19 Genomic Epidemiology Toolkit to help epidemiologists apply genomic data to state and local investigations and track SARS-CoV-2 strains circulating in their jurisdictions.

The toolkit consists of modular video presentations, audio transcripts, case studies, scientific narratives, examples/templates, job aids, reference documents, external links, etc. The first phase of the toolkit includes three modules that introduce genomic epidemiology, with specific reference to the genome of SARS-CoV-2.

Sign up to receive email updates when new modules are added to the COVID-19 Genomic Epidemiology Toolkit.