Participation in the survey was on a voluntary basis and responses were kept confidential. Only aggregated results are presented. By participating in the survey, participants consented to their data being used in aggregated form in this publication, that they are co-authoring. Ethical approval: not applicable, no human subjects were enrolled for this study. This article relates to a survey that does not constitute a research project within the meaning of the Swiss Federal Human Research Act. Consequently, it is not an activity subject to authorization by the ethics commission within the meaning of art. 45 of the Federal Human Research Act.

The top three identified benefits of having a regional/national DP acting as data broker rather than individual labs submitting to international repositories were (i) to ensure common best standards on e.g. data anonymization, (ii) to ensure higher data quality thanks to curation and common standards and (iii) to ensure that sensitive data is not siloed by using e.g. pseudonymised identifiers that can be used to link data to other datasets where authorized, e.g. with national public health authorities ( Table 1). The optimization of resources and processes was deemed at least “Very important” by 8/11 respondents. None of the proposed answers was qualified as “Not important” by respondents.

Additional benefits highlighted by the participants included (a) having a better overview of the available data within a region/country; (b) serving as open education resources and trusted knowledge bases for public awareness and to emphasize how data is used for public health decisions; (c) fostering data interoperability globally by ensuring adhering to common international standards; (d) reinforcing the influence of DPs in fostering better alignment with FAIR principles by international repositories that ingest DP data (e.g. establishment of APIs, removal of barriers to the free re-use of public-funded data).

Participants were asked to evaluate their maturity. More than 70% of surveyed DPs were in production for brokering SARS-CoV-2 data to the EU Covid-19 Data Portal. The remaining DP were still under development ( Figure 3).

All regional/national DPs perform data curation ( Figure 4). While this task might be sometimes overlooked upon resource planning, our survey shows that this task represents a considerable workload between 1-6 person-months (PM) in +50% of DPs, 7-12 PM in about 20% of DPs and more than 20 PM in the remaining 20% of DPs ( Figure 5). Data analysis and annotations are performed by more than 75% of DPs with a very variable workload, likely depending on the level of automation of the analysis pipeline and whether the DP has the capacity to perform tailored analyses for its end users. Reporting to public health authorities is also performed by more than 75% of DPs, representing a smaller workload of 1-3 PM for the majority of them.

On the data brokering side, more than 50% of surveyed DPs submit consensus genomes to GISAID and ENA (EU Covid-19 Data Portal), and also raw datasets to the ENA ( Figure 4). Of note, workload for setting up and submitting data to the ENA is generally heavier than for submitting to GISAID ( Figure 5). The distinction on the workload for data updates was not included in this survey; we highlight here that ENA has an update mechanism through its API, which is not the case for GISAID which requires manual interventions.

In order to understand the resources needed over a year, participants were asked how many PM they used over the course of 2021, with the assumption that it may be representative of the effort needed during a pandemic year. In total, 270 PM were used over 2021 by the 11 DPs, with a great variety in effort but a median of 10 PM ( Figure 6). For these resources, the relative amount of funding came from the Ministries of Public Health (49%), institutional money (18%), Ministries of Research (16%), public funding agencies (15%) and private foundations (2%) ( Figure 7 - note that these percentages are not based on the amount of funding but on the percentage of funding they represent at each resource). On whether the obtained funding was sufficient or came with significant hurdles, participants mentioned that: •

The received funding was generally sufficient, although it sometimes required re-allocating funds internally or struggling for getting more funding from various sources as demand evolved in the dynamic pandemic context.

At the time of this survey (August-September 2022), 70% of DPs were fully covered in terms of funding for the whole year, while the remaining 30% of DPs had limited resources that ended before the end of the year ( Figure 8).

The last part of the survey aimed at determining the short term funding and features envisioned by regional/national DPs beyond SARS-CoV-2. First, we aimed to assess if public health authorities envision building upon their SARS-CoV-2 surveillance platforms to also monitor other pathogens or antimicrobial resistance ( Figure 9). In the Fall 2022, the interest by public health authorities to expand the DP functionalities beyond SARS-CoV-2 over 2023 remained unclear for more than 45% of DPs, highlighting the difficulty to make even short-term plans for resource maintenance and expansion.

For those countries that expressed wishes for DP expansion, the top needs mentioned by more than 50% of respondents covered expanding (i) to other pathogens, (ii) to antimicrobial surveillance, (iii) to reporting and monitoring capacity, and (iv) to a One Health platform ( Figure 10).

These activities represented an overall 327 PM, with varying levels across DPs and a median of 18 PM ( Figure 11). The funding to cover these resources over 2023 was however largely uncovered at the time of the survey, in the Fall 2022 ( Figure 12).

In the last part of the survey, participants were asked what could help make a stronger case for regional/national DPs within public health authorities and within other funding bodies. Within public health authorities, the elements that stood out in more than 50% of respondents answers were: •

General satisfaction of users at public health authorities in using/interacting with the DP (e.g. through reports they receive or data access) - 64%

Within other funding bodies, important elements mentioned by more than 50% of respondents included: •

Visibility of the platform at the European level (e.g. through ELIXIR) - 73%

The participants also identified the following supporters of regional/national DPs to help making a stronger case for mid and long term funding (showing answers with more than 50% agreement): •

Data providers (e.g. diagnostic labs) - 91%