As the world waits for more information on Omicron, I’d like to give a shout-out to the scientists collecting data on this novel variant and sharing it with the public. As of today, over 500 Omicron sequences have been posted to the genome sharing site GISAID.
If you’d like to keep up with the new sequences, there are three sources I recommend:
- GISAID, an international organization working to quickly share data on coronavirus and flu virus strains.
- Nextstrain, an open-source pathogen tracking platform supported by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and other institutions.
- CoVariants, a platform visualizing coronavirus variant data, run by Dr. Emma Hodcroft at the University of Bern with support from other scientists.