Phylodynamic Real-time Monitoring Of Sars-cov-2 Genomes In Luxembourg (Co-PhyloDyn)

The current COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus is an extreme challenge to mankind's health affecting currently more than 1.7 million people world-wide. Current approaches to manage this challenge rely on reliable testing as well as the development of vaccination which both depend on the stability of specific sequences of the viral genome. Sequencing of viral genomes from patient samples provides deep insights on pathogen dynamics in terms of phylogeny and evolution allowing for spreading analysis and adaptation of molecular diagnostic and prevention strategies. Hence, the real-time monitoring and automated dynamic analysis of phylogenomic data derived from virus genome sequencing together with available geographical and clinical data in an accessible and portable manner is key to support decisions in research, diagnostics and physiology, which strongly impacts individuals and societies within and outside Luxembourg and is also important as a health monitoring resource for possible similar future events. In the frame of the planned COVID+ study, the Co-PhyloDyn project will lay the foundation of the retrospective in-depth genomic characterization of COVID-19 positive cases over the COVID-19 pandemic in Luxembourg and its neighbouring countries by implementing an efficient fully automated and reproducible infrastructure for the phylodynamic analysis of COVID-10 in Luxembourg. The close collaboration between the Luxembourg Centre of Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) at the University of Luxembourg and the Department of Microbiology at the Laboratoire National de Santé (LNS) will bring together the needed expertise in genomics, bioinformatics, sequencing and virology to tackle the needed in-time phylogenetic analysis of COVID-19 in Luxembourg.