The emergence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a global pandemic witnessed the rapid development of sensitive and high-throughput approaches for the diagnosis, surveillance and genetic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 for public health. The Illumina COVIDSeq was one such scalable and high sensitivity assay for detection, surveillance and genetic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2, that utilized a multiplex PCR amplicon based enrichment followed by barcoding and next generation sequencing. The COVIDSeq assay was successfully deployed worldwide for enabling genetic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2. Further modifications of the assay enabled it to be adapted for accelerated sequencing on benchtop sequencers. The rich learnings from the COVID-19 genomic tool kits provided a template for developing similar methods for other emerging infectious diseases. Using multiple independent examples we demonstrate how the experiences and genomic tools developed in the COVID-19 pandemic could be brought together for developing surveillance for emerging pathogens towards building a rapid response strategy for one health surveillance application.

Speaker:

Dr. Sridhar Sivasubbu, Ph.D Senior Principal Scientist, Functional Genomics , CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (“CSIR-IGIB”) Sridhar joined the CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) in 2006 to establish the functional genomics program. He co-founded the Genomics for Understanding Rare Disease: India Alliance Network (GUaRDIAN), one of India's largest precision medicine ecosystems working on rare genetic diseases. He also served as the Chief Scientific Officer of The Center for Genomic Application; a Public-Private partnership company established by IGIB.

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