This technical guidance provides guidance to laboratories, microbiology experts and relevant stakeholders in making decisions on establishing or scaling up capability and capacity to detect and identify circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants, and in making decisions on which technologies to use and for which objective.

Vaccination campaigns against COVID-19 disease are well under way in all EU/EEA countries, and more detailed information is now available on the ECDC website.

The downloadable data file contains the data on which the maps requested in the Council Recommendation on a coordinated approach to the restriction of free movement in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in EU/EEA are based. They are published every Thursday.