National collection stored at National Pandemic Center (NPC) at Karolinska Institutet

Description: Healthcare sample collections are primarily intended for healthcare, diagnostics, and treatment, but can also be made available for research when there is a Swedish ethical approval and the patient has given their consent. This collection comprises COVID-19 diagnostic swab samples from the majority of Swedish Regions. The healthcare samples have been sent to National Pandemic Center (NPC) at Karolinska Institutet (KI) for qPCR diagnostics of SARS-CoV-2 (April – December 2020; 3 regions), or whole genome sequencing (WGS) of SARS-CoV-2 (February 2021 – May 2023; 20 regions), as part of NPC's national tasks, under agreement with Folkhälsomyndigheten (Public health agency of Sweden). Throughout the period, the weekly number of incoming samples and regions of origin have varied, depending on the pandemic status and demands for analyses. The collection currently holds around 1.5 million samples, which are hosted at NPC KI and legally owned by the Regional Biobanks. Samples were taken from between 1,000 and 1,000,000 donors. All samples in this collection are heat inactivated.