NU-OmICS role in COG-UK

The COVID-19 Genomics UK consortium (COG-UK) was formed in March 2020 as a response to the early days of the epidemic. It aimed to create a sustainable, UK-wide, public health sequencing network that would provide knowledge, expertise, and facilities to sequence and analyse SARS-CoV-2 genomes. In July 2021, long-term monitoring of COVID-19 was passed back to the UK Health Service Agency (UKHSA) while COG-UK continued to focus on research, data-linkage, and data analysis.

NU-OMICS DNA Sequencing research facility at Northumbria University joined COG-UK in April 2020 as one of sixteen sequencing hubs located across the UK. NU-OMICS was matched to seven hospital diagnostic labs in the North East of England:

  • North Cumbria Integrative Care
  • Newcastle University Healthcare Trust
  • Northumbria NHS Foundation Trust
  • North Tees NHS Foundation Trust
  • South Tees NHS Foundation Trust
  • Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust
  • Gateshead NHS Foundation Trust
In addition, during this time, NU-OMICS scaled to support the regional COVID-19 Lighthouse Lab in Gateshead. Professor Chris Witty came by NU-OMICS during his visit to Northumbria University. It allowed the team to discuss the development of the facility over the last 8 years and our roll supporting regional surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 during the first part of the pandemic period linked to COG-UK.

In July 2021, when COG-UK rolled down, and until March 2022, NU-OMICS continued to support UKHSA as a resilience site, focusing on samples from national studies including those from the Office for National Statistics. Close to the end, NU-OMICS was sequencing >7.5k genomes per week and by the end, had sequenced >100k genomes.

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