When BY-COVID started in 2021 we were in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The initial pandemic response benefited from many decades of biomedical research based on the sharing and re-use of molecular and public health data with real world impacts on the rapid availability of testing, vaccines and policy, and saved millions of lives. The BY-COVID project aimed to build on these successes, improving the speed and effectiveness of responses to future infectious disease outbreaks.

We have developed pathogen data resources, promoted reproducible analysis solutions and made more knowledge openly available to those who may need it in the future. It has been rewarding to work on this project through difficult times and we hope our solutions and recommendations are of value for future preparedness and response.

Peter Maccallum, BY-COVID Coordinator, ELIXIR Hub

The brochure presents 16 of the project’s many success stories, framed by the concept of a FAIR data journey.

Browse the brochure»

BY-COVID project has published policy recommendations for using research data infrastructure to support sustainable global pandemic preparedness.

Read the brief»

Agenda and slides» from the 11 September BY-COVID policy meeting

Eleven new pages have been added to the Infectious Diseases Toolkit» (IDTk). These include:

• Quality control of socioeconomic data view»
• Prevalence study of SARS-CoV-2 in Estonia: lessons learned view»
• An automated pipeline for analysing brain autoradiography images view»

• The Swiss and the Norwegian national pathogens portals were launched in September 2024 - view»
• The ORCID system can now be used against records listed on the Pathogens Portal - view»
• An FAQ page has been launched - view»

BY-COVID has funded two projects» to build national capacity for pandemic preparedness:

• Enhancing Slovakia's respiratory disease surveillance: integrating the national system with global data hubs and expanding local capacities
• A validation and submission tool to facilitate virus data flow into the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) via secure intermediate storage

• Socioeconomic data in cross-disciplinary infectious disease research - leaflet»
• Data sharing and reuse under GDPR - workshop materials»
• Integration of individual-level socioeconomic data for infectious diseases research and prevention in Europe - workshop materials»

BY-COVID is mentioned on p74 of the ESFRI Landscape Analysis 2024 report» as an example of a collaboration between research infrastructures from health and nutrition and social science domains.