During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, genomic epidemiological surveillance around the world became crucial to guide governmental policies and to monitor the emergence of new variants. From the beginning, Genome Detective has been contributing to SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance around the globe with our intuitive bioinformatics platform and genomic database.
Genome Detective accurately and quickly assembles viruses to characterize the mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Professor Tulio de Oliveira, the director of the Centre for Epidemic Response & Innovation (CERI) (Stellenbosch, South Africa), started sampling SARS-CoV-2 genomes early in the pandemic for this purpose, and used Genome Detective to discover the Beta and Omicron variants. In addition to the groundbreaking work of professor Tulio de Oliveira in South Africa, many other laboratories throughout the world were enabled in this pandemic to analyze their genomic SARS-CoV-2 data using Genome Detective, by virtue of its ease of use.
The continuously updated Coronavirus typing tool of Genome Detective allows the identification of all the WHO SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern.