Poster at The 22nd China Biological Products Annual Conference 2023, Zhuhai, China

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) genomes continuously evolve, causing fresh waves of infections. There is a need to monitor new variants closely in order to predict whether these emerging variants will cause new pandemic waves. Multiple strategies have been implemented, including the collection of genome sequences, interactive dashboards monitoring the spread of variants, timely aggregated assessments from experts, and advanced machine learning algorithms to predict high-risk mutations and variants. We have developed a platform, called VIVID (Virus Variant Dissector), that integrates multiple resources to streamline the process of monitoring, predicting, and retrieving information on emerging variants, enabling quick responses to develop new or assess existing vaccines and therapeutics that can fight against these new variants. VIVID was developed using the R Shiny Dashboard. With the interactive platform, users can easily identify new emerging variants based on their own definition of emergence, closely follow the WHO weekly epidemiological updates, assess the new variants’ fitness based on an advanced prediction algorithm, and retrieve the spike gene sequences of the variants of interest for downstream experiments. In addition, the database is weekly updated, and the prediction algorithm is also retrained with the updated data to avoid performance drift. With integrated resources and tools, VIVID provides a centralized platform for researchers to closely monitor and quickly respond to the emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants.