Large scale biobanks from underserved populations to accelerate COVID-19 host genetics studies in Latin America and Oceania

Indigenous peoples in under-served regions around the world are disproportionally suffering from the devastating disease burden of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our understanding of human genetic variation and its role in the susceptibility to the disease is critically important to allow precision medicine strategies, and to ensure equality. Existing biobanking and DNA profiling efforts in diverse populations are valuable resources for exploring the distribution of COVID-19-associated genetic variants that arebeing discovered in ongoing association studies worldwide. Latin America and Oceania are among the most underrepresented regions in genomics, and this project aims to harness the diversity represented in existing DNA biobanks from Mexico, Chile, Southeast Asia and the Pacific to inform public health measures to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in these regions. This project is a unique and affordable opportunity to bring under-served populations from Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region one step closer to the benefits of COVID-19 scientific research.