The DEFEND consortium will target two viral diseases of livestock which are emerging into Europe – African swine fever (ASF) and lumpy skin disease (LSD). African swine fever virus (ASFV) is the causative agent of ASF, a highly contagious disease of domestic pigs which causes a haemorrhagic syndrome with up to 100% mortality. ASF is endemic in sub-Saharan Africa and on the Italian island of Sardinia. In 2007 the disease was reported in Georgia. Since then it has spread to Russia, Ukraine, Poland and neighbouring countries. In 2017 outbreaks were reported in the Czech Republic and Romania. Wild boar are susceptible to ASFV and facilitate the continuing spread of the disease in Europe with regular spill-over into in-contact domestic pigs. The capripoxvirus Lumpy Skin Disease virus (LSDV) causes a classic systemic poxvirus disease in cattle and spreads rapidly in warm humid conditions, most likely due to insect-borne transmission. LSDV entered Europe, the Balkans and Caucasus for the first time in 2015. The ongoing epidemic has caused the deaths of thousands of cattle through mortality and eradication campaigns. ASFV and LSDV represent an immediate and serious threat to the pig and cattle industries in Europe and eastern and central Asia. The aim of the consortium is to control the growing LSD and ASF epidemics in Europe and neighbouring countries by understanding the drivers of LSDV and ASFV emergence, and generating research outputs which underpin novel diagnostic tools and vaccines and authenticate appropriate and rapid responses by decision-makers. A multi-actor approach will be incorporated as a central tenant of the project, with collaborations between experts from academia, industry, and government bodies including EU and non-EU partners from countries affected or threatened by ASF and LSD.

EVA-GLOBAL gathers 38 academic institutions at the forefront of human, animal and plant research in Virology, associated with key Non-Governmental Organisations including the World Health Organisation, OIE, FAO and related international organizations such as the CGIAR. This new project is built on the strong foundations constituted two previous EVA (2009-2014), FP7 and EVAg (2014-2019), H2020 projects. It includes high calibre institutes with the appropriate expertise to collect, characterise, standardise, authenticate and distribute human, animal and plant viruses. EVA-GLOBAL is conceived to be an open access entity aiming at developing synergies and complementary capabilities in such a way to offer an improved access to the researchers. A single-entry point, the web-based catalogue, gives a facilitate access to the end-user, to the collections including viruses, derived materials and engineered cells. This project will integrate 13 facilities dedicated to the high-risk pathogens manipulations (BSL4), which constitutes the largest BSL4 network worldwide. EVA-GLOBAL will also link up with other network-based virus associated programmes that exist globally. This unique advanced community aims at becoming the most responsive network to improve the control of emerging or re-emerging virus outbreaks at the global level. During the past EVAg project, this infrastructure has already been able to play a key role for the control of emerging virus diseases by the supply of unique reagents for the detection of viruses under the WHO umbrella. Through this new ambitious four-year project and the new institutes joining the consortium, EVA-GLOBAL will become the largest virtual virus collection for human, animal and plant viruses will move beyond the current state-of-the-art to provide an increasingly valuable resource and service to the scientific community, including government health departments, higher education institutes, industry and to the general public as well.