World's most sophisticated COVID-19 sequencing system The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is far from over as countries report surging cases, including those caused by emerging variants. To date, there are over 195 million cases across the globe, with more than 4.18 million deaths. In response to the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 infections in the United Kingdom, the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium was formed to rapidly sequence SARS-CoV-2 genomes as part of a national-scale genomic surveillance strategy. Image Credit: Marina Litvinova / Shutterstock The new bioinformatics software and cloud computing approach developed at the University of Birmingham has been tagged as the world's most sophisticated COVID-19 sequencing system. Called CLIMB-COVID, the sequencing tool was designed to handle the enormous challenge of sequencing SARS-CoV-2 genomes.