GISAID
About the resource
GISAID is a global initiative founded in 2008 to enable rapid sharing of influenza genomic data outside the constraints of standard public archives. Its access model — registered, identifiable users agreeing to a data-access agreement — has been a deliberate trade-off to encourage early sharing from countries and labs uncomfortable with fully open release.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, GISAID became the dominant repository for SARS-CoV-2 sequences (more than 17 million genomes shared as of 2024) and remains the platform behind virtually every variant-tracking dashboard. It now covers influenza, SARS-CoV-2, RSV, mpox, avian influenza H5N1, MERS-CoV and several others. The model is contested — some labs prefer the fully open NCBI Virus / ENA — but its operational scale is unmatched.
What you'd use it for
- 01Pull pathogen sequences for variant surveillance and lineage tracking
- 02Submit national sequences to a global outbreak-response platform
- 03Feed Nextstrain or similar phylodynamic pipelines
- 04Cross-reference variant emergence with travel and reporting patterns