Digital Dashboards Disclose SARS-CoV-2 Variants

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) launched a digital dashboard that overviews the proportion of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants of interest in Europe.

A variant has one or more mutations that differentiate it from other variants in circulation. As expected, multiple variants of the SARS-CoV-2 beta coronavirus have been documented throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Where data are available from more than one source for a country, the source used is the one with the highest number of sequences in the last two weeks. This new dashboard is updated every Thursday afternoon. 

The full-screen version is available at this ECDC link.

On May 17, 2021, a US government interagency group developed a Variant Classification scheme that defines three classes of SARS-CoV-2 variants:

• Variant of Interest
• Variant of Concern
• Variant of High Consequence

Current SARS-CoV-2 variants in the USA are being monitored and characterized. They are listed on this CDC webpage.