BeYond COVID

Project Acronym BY-COVID
Funding Program Horizon Europe
Budget 12,000,000
Coordinator EUROPEAN MOLECULAR BIOLOGY LABORATORY - EMBL
Website https://by-covid.org/
Start date - End date 1 October 1 2021 -– 30 September 30 , 2024

About BY-COVID 

The BY-COVID project aims to connect well-established data resources and deliver access to heterogeneous yet interlinked and organised data across domains and jurisdictions via the components of the COVID-19 Data Platform (https://www.covid19dataportal.org/). By connecting open and normative pathogen genomes to data resources, the project will create a flexible and interlinked core of FAIR data capable of addressing the constantly evolving questions during a pandemic. The commitment to open standards and integration methodologies allow organisations outside the consortium to make use of, join, contribute to and ultimately sustain this ecosystem as the data backbone of Europe’s pandemic preparedness and response. 

BY-COVID Consortium 

The BY-COVID consortium brings together European research infrastructures, public health bodies and major research centres in all project relevant disciplines: public health, medical research, clinical trials, epidemiology, biomolecular sciences and social sciences. The consortium includes experts and organisations with roles and functions within their country or beyond, and mandate and experience for communication, during pandemics. 

Despite its European focus BY-COVID will enable researchers on a global level to make use of services and data provided in the project and establish Europe as a worldwide leader on pandemic preparedness, open science and innovation.  

Consortium members have established formal and informal collaboration with global partners, e.g. for SARS-CoV-2 genomes (COVID-19 Data Platform has data from over 90 countries and maintain an international network further supported by WP6), Federated EGA (EMBL-EBI, CRG) collaborate with Canada on cohorts, the covid19.galaxyproject.org is a close collaboration between European, Australian and US partners. 

Success story

Through Codex4SMEs, a collaboration with the Integrated Biobank of Luxemburg (IBBL) was set up that helped Metabrain Research develop high level quality procedures, support the development of validated SOPs and also the validation of its biomarker in human samples. Find out more here. 

EATRIS role in the project  

EATRIS will be involved in setting up activities (e.g. community building events) for training and building capacity with national and international stakeholders (WP6). EATRIS will participate in activities focused on exchange of technical “know-how” on surveillance systems for pathogens to facilitate interactions with country-level stakeholders including ministry and government officials, clinicians and public health focal points. It will also support the activities to engage with intergovernmental policy-makers and funders focusing on exploiting the established relationships with policy entities involved in the response to the pandemic.