Whole genome sequencing in surveillance and outbreak investigations (from ESCAIDE 2024)

Topic outline

• Whole genome sequencing in surveillance and outbreak investigations

  Whole genome sequencing in surveillance and outbreak investigations

  This session was held as a part of ESCAIDE 2024, ECDC's annual conference on applied infectious disease epidemiology. 

  Want to know more?

  You can find more information about ESCAIDE here: https://www.escaide.eu, and about ECDC's work here: https://ecdc.europa.eu.
• Objectives

  Objectives

  After completing watching this video, participants should be able to:
  

  • Understand the role of whole genome sequencing (WGS) in outbreak management, its benefits in identifying infection clusters and managing outbreaks.
  • Give examples of challenges faced at a regional and local level in using WGS in outbreak management.
  • Understand the importance of data sharing for effective surveillance and outbreak investigation.
• Watch the session

  Watch the session

  Please note: the session for this course starts at 2:34.
• Summary of the content

  Summary of the content

  Summary of the content

  This presentation is part of a plenary session held at ESCAIDE 2024, titled "Surveillance of infectious diseases: how can we better tell what's going on". In this presentation, the speaker discusses the role of whole genome sequencing (WGS) in outbreak management, highlighting its benefits in identifying infection clusters and managing outbreaks. It addresses challenges faced at regional and local hospital levels, emphasising the need for high accuracy, low cost, and rapid turnaround time. The impact of COVID-19 on high-throughput sequencing and regional surveillance is explored, showing how WGS aids in tracking virus variants. Additionally, the presentation covers plasmid spread detection and advancements in sequencing techniques, underscoring the importance of data sharing for effective surveillance and outbreak investigation.

  Chairs (learn more about the chairs on the ESCAIDE website)

  • Ágnes Hajdu - Senior Advisor at the Unit of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology of the National Center for Public Health and Pharmacy, Hungary
    
  • Alicia Barrasa - EPIET Alumni Network, Spain

  Speaker (learn more about the speaker on the ESCAIDE website)

  • Lieke van Alphen - Medical Molecular Microbiologist at the Department of Medical Microbiology, Infectious diseases and infection prevention at Maastricht University Medical Centre, Netherlands
• Additional resources

  Additional resources
  • URLGenEpi-BioTrain - Virtual training 01: Whole-genome sequencing-based (WGS) detection of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria

    You may want to increase your knowledge on the topic by completing a virtual training workshop that introduces participants to theoretical and practical aspects of detection of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria using whole-genome sequence (WGS) data.
    

  • URLCheck out other ESCAIDE materials on the Learning Portal
• Contacts

  Contacts

  For more information about ESCAIDE, please see www.escaide.eu, or contact the ESCAIDE team at escaide.conference@ecdc.europa.eu. 

  If you have questions regarding other training initiatives please contact: courses@ecdc.europa.eu.

  If you have technical issues please contact ECDC Helpdesk - ICT Front Office ICT.FrontOffice@ecdc.europa.eu.

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