The primary goal of this report is to quantify the number of Spanish SARS-CoV-2 sequences uploaded to GISAID, which are available to researchers. To effectively monitor the pandemic, it is important for sequences to be uploaded as soon as possible after being obtained from patients. However, this is not always the case and we may find sequences that were uploaded recently but were actually obtained from patients two years ago.

To address this issue, we will download all Spanish patient sequences from GISAID and analyze the associated metadata, including the upload date, sampling date, location in the autonomous community, and lineage/variant of interest.

All data is available to researchers through the GISAID platform.

Spanish sequences uploaded in GISAID

This report displays all sequences that were uploaded from the beginning of the pandemic until the time of its creation:

221,407 sequences from Spain available on 2023-04-08

To determine the effect of the delay in uploading sequences on epidemiological surveillance, we classified them based on the number of days between the date of sample collection and the date of upload to the database. This classification allowed us to divide the sequences into three levels.

  1. <=1 month: The time gap between the sampling date and the upload date is equal to or less than one month.
  2. 1-2 months: The time gap between the sampling date and the upload date is more than one month but less than or equal to two months.
  3. > 2 months: The time gap between the sampling date and the upload date is more than two months.

Percentage of sequences by upload status

The number of sequences for the 3 levels from the beginning of the pandemic are shown below:

Number of sequences uploaded by month

Number of sequences by region

Histogram by region

VOCs in Spain

Spanish sequences uploaded with a delay greater than 1 month

Bubble plot for delayed sequences showing percentage and number of sequences by Region

Map distribution showing the number of delayed sequences by Region

Spanish sequences with no delay

Bubble plot for updated sequences showing percentage and number of sequences by Region

Map distribution showing the number of updated sequences by Region