CVR - Coronavirus Vaccines R&D Roadmap

Milestone
1.2.h

Sequence data sharing

In progress

Promote the timely sharing of coronavirus sequence data and metadata in open-access repositories.

Progress Highlights

The members of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) committed to expanding the collaboration to be more representative of the global community of sequences and users in 2024.

The WHO published guiding principles for pathogen genome data sharing in 2022, which encourages timely sharing of pathogen genomic data and metadata in public repositories. This guidance was updated in October 2025, in which 12 attributes of Pathogen Genomic Data Sharing Platforms were identified in consultation with global experts.

Public health scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) wrote an open letter calling for scientists to commit to open sharing of SARS-CoV-2 data in repositories that don’t restrict data re-use; as of October 2025, the letter had over 800 electronic signatures