The importance of databases during pandemics: A study of GISAID during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract: The GISAID database has swiftly become the world’s largest genome sequence database. As of May 2022, there is currently over 10 million genome sequence submissions to GISAID compared to 25 thousand in early 2020. This paper has the scientific goal in examining how integral the GISAID database has been in the COVID-19 response. This goal was achieved by analysing the citation rate of GISAID in the highest cited COVID-19 papers according to Google Scholar. As well as performing interview studies with relevant people in the field and doing a literature study of GISAID. The thesis that GISAID has been key in battling the pandemic could be verified in this project as the citation rate of GISAID increased during the pandemic in COVID-19 papers. Moreover, the database has been cited as crucial in the development of vaccines and in the extensive monitoring of the virus. The vast amount of data is however a double-edged sword as there are reports of problems regarding the data quality. This is due to the current format of inserting data, the lack of educational material for the use of the database and potential patient confidentiality related issues. Other problems reported are the fact that there is a big gap between countries on a global scale regarding both the collect to submission time as well as the number of genomes logged to the database. Overall, these issues should be looked at and adjusted through the combined efforts of GISAID, the worlds various governments and the World Health Organization. Despite these issues regarding GISAID, we concluded that it has, and will continue to play a critical role in the pandemic response.