It was announced on March 27, 2024 that the World Health Organization (WHO) has selected Germany’s Institute of Virology at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin as a member of the newly established WHO Coronavirus Network (CoViNet). [1, 2]
The Institute of Virology, headed by Prof. Christian Drosten, is one of eleven laboratories in Europe, and 33 laboratories worldwide that analyse SARS-CoV-2 and other emerging coronavirus genomes – the Global network of reference laboratories aim to detect and monitor coronaviruses, in the same way influenza genomes have been monitored for decades for selecting vaccine strains.